Disclaimer: Fraser, Kowalski et al. are not mine. I'm not making any money from this. Yeah, I know I'm nuts.

Author's Notes: This 33,000 word opus is actually the first fic I have ever written (I just posted The Giving Tree much sooner). Many, many, many thanks to Jean for beta and to my fellow NewRideForever listlings for the feedback and corrections.

Story Notes: I wrote the first draft of this story in September and October of 2003. This story was originally posted to the NewRideForever list in January and February of 2004. I did my best to make it read and feel like a Season Three episode--a mix of crime drama and quirky humor. I would have chosen "Episode-Like" for "Category" if they'd had one. Rated PG for mild violence and a few cuss words.

The night was crisp, the set preternaturally quiet. Undeterred, the figure glided through a gate and past a night watchman snoring in his pickup truck, carefully remaining out of the glare of lights strung at intervals to keep the unwanted at bay. Two rows of trailers, now silent and empty, stretched out before him like an abandoned street in Levittown.

He was sure he had seen her here. He had all the time in the world. He would find her, and his anger would do the rest.

Sticking to the shadows between the right-hand row of trailers, he soon saw his quarry. She had been left in the dark, alone and neglected. He had to suppress a snort of derision at their folly. Blithely unaware, she fluttered ever so lightly in the night air, as if to whisper, "Aren't I the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

She was just out of reach, but that was easily remedied. Lightly, carefully, he climbed the metal stairs to the trailer doors on either side and loosened the knots in the rope suspending her until he could pull her down to eye level. His blood pounded in anticipation.

He removed his weapon from his pocket, the blade catching the starlight, and began to cut, ragged, sloppy, ugly cuts spreading from right to left. He delighted in the crudeness of it, in the red, fluttering shreds left behind, and in the pain he knew he was inflicting. He had to work to keep his breathing under control.

With a final vicious slash, she gave up all resistance and sagged into his arms. With a grim smile, he bundled her up and stuffed her under his jacket...and then he did something very strange.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crisply folded piece of paper and a straight pin. With great care, he pinned the paper to the shredded, tattered remains still hanging from the rope as gently as he'd pin a permission slip to a six year-old's pinafore.

He stepped back and smoothed the paper and pin to make sure they were perfectly parallel with the ground beneath his feet. Then he turned and melted back into the night.

***

Ray Kowalski, his jacket slung carelessly over one shoulder, hurried down the precinct hallway, mentally cursing in time with each boot heel echoing on the linoleum. He knocked open the double doors with more force than necessary and stormed across the bullpen toward his desk.

The doors squealed in protest as they swung to and fro. Lieutenant Welsh looked up from the doorway to his office, coffee in hand, and fixed the detective with an over-the-glasses glare that could have melted concrete.

"Well. Detective. How kind of you to grace us with your presence this morning...or should I say 'afternoon'?"

Christ, he wasn't that late! Kowalski tossed his jacket down on his desk chair and turned to face his supervisor, a glint of rage still in his eye. "Sir, I..." He brushed a hand through his spiky hair and let out a slow breath, calming himself. "I'm sorry, but I got tangled up in that stupid movie they're filming."

Although she was halfway across the room at her computer station, Francesca was never one to miss a juicy confrontation. If it were possible to get a PhD in Eavesdropping, she would long since have become Dr. Vecchio. "Really?" she choked, jumping up from her chair and giving the top of her monitor a whack of sheer delight. "So Ray," she called, hustling over to the detective's desk, "are you gonna be in the movie now? Oh, I would kill for a chance like that...did you see that Tony Klein? He's gorgeous! Almost as cute as--" She barely caught herself in time, but flicked her hair behind one ear and continued smoothly, "--Well, he's pretty cute, if you know what I mean."

Ray rolled his eyes and shot Francesca an exasperated look. "No, Frannie, it wasn't like that at all. I'm coming in to work like usual, I get as far as Union, and then boom, I'm in a parking lot." He glanced over to Welsh, hoping for some sign of sympathy from the lieutenant. "I can't believe they can just waltz in and take over the city anytime they want. Took me more than an hour to get around their stupid chase scene. And all the gawkers just made it worse."

Welsh's disapproving frown seemed chiseled into place. He turned, swept up this morning's Chicago Guardian from his desk, and waved the front section demonstratively in the air. "Detective, if you'd bothered to watch the news last night, or read the paper this morning," he said acidly, "you would have known--like everyone else in this city--that they were using that whole section of town today. I suggest you start visiting your local newsstand, and pronto. They're going to be here for the rest of the week." He tossed the paper onto Kowalski's desk, where it landed with a soft whap, and returned to the sanctity of his office, grumbling something under his breath about cops who lived under rocks as he shut his door.

"Mmm," Kowalski acknowledged, taking the paper and looking at the story at the bottom corner of the front page. "What kinda movie are they makin', anyway?"

"Oh, it's going to be dreamy!" Francesca cooed. "It's about this Chicago police officer, Justin Powell, who uncovers a plot by some crazy anti-government types. They're planning to smuggle guns over the Canadian border, use them to hijack a train, fill the train with explosives, run it into the Sears Tower and blow the building up, and then they want to make their getaway in this stolen Russian nuclear submarine they've got hidden under the surface of Lake Michigan...oh yeah, and there's some stolen Mob money involved in there somewhere too...and..." Her enthusiasm ebbed as she looked over to Ray and saw him nearly doubled over with laughter. "What are you laughing at?" she cried in dismay.

Ray finally managed to regain control of himself and wiped his eyes. "Frannie, that is the most ridiculous, nutty, totally whacked-out thing I've ever heard. Is that really how Hollywood thinks Chicago cops spend their time?"

Frannie blinked, looked away and back at him. "Well...well, why not? Why not make it exciting?" She crossed her arms, settled her lips into a studied pout, and dug in. "'But noooo,' Ray says, 'No, that's not realistic.' Let's make those poor people with their popcorn, and, and, and their collector's cup sodas, just make 'em sit there and watch you drink coffee and fill out paperwork for two hours. Yeah, that'll really pack 'em in. Forget it, Ray! You gotta show action...you gotta show cops wrapping heat..."

"That's 'packin' heat,' Frannie."

She waved him off, undaunted, and drew her arms out toward an unseen audience. "Our Chicago heroes, putting themselves in the eye of fire!" she finished with a flourish. "It makes me all tingly just thinking about it."

"Yeah, well, it makes me wanna puke." He took one last look at the paper, crumpled it into a ball, and slam-dunked it into the wastebasket. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some real cop work to do, nothing about submarines full of stolen Mob money..." He ignored her hurt look and turned away, still chuckling.

***

Ray hadn't been at his desk for five minutes when a familiar figure in red dashed into the bullpen, obviously agitated and...sniffling?

"Turnbull?" Oh, jeez, if it wasn't Canada's Biggest Nutjob masquerading as a Mountie. How he ever got onto the same force as Fraser was beyond Ray's understanding. Maybe he had some really stellar connections. Or parents who wanted him as far away as possible.

"Detective Vecchio..." Turnbull made a valiant effort to compose himself. "Please excuse the intrusion, but a crime has been committed, a horrifying crime! The Consulate wishes to file a report on behalf of the victim and ensure that no effort is spared to bring the perpetrators to justice."

This sounded like it might actually be serious. Why wasn't Fraser here? Ray fished through the chaos of his desk until he found a note pad and a pencil. "Shoot. What happened?"

Turnbull began to speak, but he was drowned out by the foghorn of Welsh's yell. "Vecchio! In my office! Now!"

Ray and Turnbull hurried to answer the summons and lined up in front of The Bellowing One's desk.

"Ah," noted Welsh, turning from the phone to see the Other Red One instead of Fraser, "Constable Turnbull. Glad you're here..." Turnbull pulled a white linen handkerchief from the leather pouch attached to his Sam Browne and blew into it, loudly. "...I think. I just spoke with a very upset Melinda Dottweiler, Unit Publicist for Justin Powell, Supercop."

Ray's face fell. "You've gotta be kidding." That damn movie just won't leave me alone!

Welsh held up a stubby finger. "I'm not done yet, Detective. It seems that she's on her way to the station at this very moment to file a report on...how did she put it...a 'murdered flag.'"

"A what? She's coming over here for a what?"

Turnbull was nodding sadly and wiping at his nose again with that wussy handkerchief. "We just heard ourselves, sir. Miss Dottweiler was horrified, and rightfully so, I might add, at the poor welcome her crew is receiving in Chicago."

"Exactly," said Welsh, getting back on track. "Even if it's just petty vandalism, it's a big black eye for the city. Any minute now, the Chicago Film Office is going to be on that line telling me how much money these films bring into the local economy, and asking me if I want to see it all disappear because I laughed this woman out of my office."

Ray grinned. Sometimes it was great to be low on the food chain. He'd never have to deal with that kind of political hot air.

"I'll say no, of course not," Welsh continued, "and tell him I'm putting one of our very finest on the case." Ray, realizing where this was going, started to protest, but Welsh silenced him with a glare that brooked no dissent. "You will take this woman's statement, and you will do it nicely, or you'll be issuing parking tickets until you have incurable writer's cramp."

Ray knew he was beaten. "Yes, sir."

"And Constable Turnbull...please...ah...pursue this from your end as well, if you would."

Turnbull snapped to attention. "But of course, sir."

"Thank you, Constable." Turnbull remained rooted to the spot. Welsh shot Ray a long-suffering look.

Ray got the message and lurched into action. "So, I guess that means you'd be needin' to get back to the Consulate to, y'know, uh, investigate and stuff, right?" he prodded.

"Why yes, my thoughts exactly," Turnbull marveled. "And may I just say what a pleasure it is working with two sharp, seasoned officers such as yourselves." He smiled and nodded to each of them, then strode out of the office, murmuring to himself, "Amazing...it's like they can read my mind..."

Kowalski hurried back to his desk, trying to make it presentable before Miss Dottweiler arrived. He couldn't help but picture a big, burly woman with dark hair, coppery eyebrows, and giant, sharp teeth, ready to tear him to shreds if he made the slightest mistake. The thought made him tidy up even more frantically. He checked that his badge was at his waist and even finger-combed his hair. In a few short moments, he reached one of the bottom layers of papers. Amazingly, the entire chaotic pile had rested on a single styrofoam coffee cup, still half-full of turgid liquid.

"Well, how 'bout that," he noted, picking up the coffee cup and turning to heave it into the wastebasket, only to come face-to-face with a petite blonde woman. She wore a crisply pressed light blue suit and had her hair in a no-nonsense pageboy, but her smile was the warmest thing he'd seen all week.

She extended a well-manicured hand. "Melinda Dottweiler, Arcadia Films Unit Publicist. I'm in town with the Supercop film crew." She had marvelously green eyes.

"Uh, yeah, I, uh...coffee, Ms. Dottweiler?" Too late, he realized the coffee had big green spots floating on top of it, like a pristine bay marred by an oil slick.

"No, thanks, but I appreciate the offer," she replied smoothly. "And everybody calls me Dot."

Greatly relieved, he dropped the cup in the garbage. "Good. Uh, no, I mean, good for you, 'cause too much coffee isn't, uh, very healthy." He finally remembered to shake the woman's proffered hand. "Good to meet you, Dot. Detective Ray Vecchio. You just go ahead and have a seat," he offered, hurriedly sweeping a stack of files off the chair next to his desk, "and I'll be very glad to take your statement."

Dot brushed a hand across her mouth to hide a smile and did as he asked. "Detective Vecchio," she began, her expression hardening, "it's all very odd. The craft truck people didn't see a thing, but then they're usually setting up before dawn anyway. The next batch of people started coming onto the set between nine and nine-thirty this morning to set up the day's shots, and they discovered this." She pulled a clear plastic bag out of her briefcase. "We had a Canadian flag hanging vertically between two trailers, and during the night, someone pulled it down. This was all that was left of it." She smoothed the plastic over the sad remnants in the bag. The edge webbing and top corner eyelets were intact, but only two or three inches of the red fabric of the flag itself were still attached, and it was ragged and shredded, as if a starving rat had chewed it off. Yep, that was a "murdered flag," all right.

Kowalski gave a low whistle. "What was the guy using, a rusty butter knife? The rest of it won't be much of a trophy in that condition."

"Trophy?"

"Yeah, kids swipe stuff like this all the time. Diehard movie fans. Last year they were shootin' a Wonder Woman movie here and someone took her whole costume, golden lasso and all."

"Did you catch the thief?"

"Well, that was over in District 18, but, uh...no. I'm sure we'll nab your guy, though." If he got any smoother, he'd have to go dunk his head in the water fountain!

"Thank you. I know you'll do your best. Would it be possible to have your forensics staff look at this?" She slid the bag over to him.

"Yeah, sure thing," he said, gifting Dot with a dazzling smile of his own. "It was smart to bag it--it'll preserve anything that might be on there. Fingerprints don't take on cloth, but maybe we can get something else useful off it." He grabbed a random piece of paper from the remaining piles on his desk, scribbled frantically on the back of it, and handed it to her. "Here. If you think of anything else, or if something else happens, give me a buzz."

She nodded, extracted one of her own cards from a slim silver case, and handed it to him with deft grace. "I will. I'd really appreciate it if you could fax over a copy of the Forensics report when it's ready. The number's on the card. Nice meeting you, Detective Vecchio." She gave him a final half-smile and picked up her briefcase.

"Yeah, the pleasure's all mine," he finally managed to mumble to his shoes, but she was already halfway across the room.

She hesitated and looked back over her shoulder at him as she walked out of the squad room, and with a sudden pang in his chest, Ray knew she'd held something back.

***

Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting in the Intrepid, the gray one he liked from the motor pool, in front of the Canadian Consulate, impatiently waiting with the passenger door open. Fraser came down the steps and out to the car, Stetson in hand and a file folder tucked under one arm. Diefenbaker lingered over an interesting patch of grass before leaping into the car and settling into the back seat. "Finally, the voice of reason," he greeted Fraser as they pulled away from the curb, "or as close as we get around here, anyway. Where were you this morning? You find out about a secret invasion plan?"

The clean-cut, ramrod-straight Mountie looked over at Ray and tilted his head ever so slightly to the right, and if Ray had had a microscope to hand, he might have seen a tiny wrinkle of puzzlement form between the Constable's eyes before vanishing an instant later. "Well, no, not actually. Canada hasn't been invaded since the War of 1812, although technically speaking, that was before Confederation occurred in 1867, so that instance might have to be excluded from consideration..." He was about to continue, but then Ray's posture and expression registered, and Fraser realized this educational exposition on Canadian history might best be postponed to a time when his audience of one might be more appreciative. "That is, uh, no, Ray. Bad morning?"

Ray absently massaged the space between his eyes with two fingers and sighed. "Yeah. No. I don't know. I overslept..." (he left out that he'd been up 'til three in the morning thinking about Stella, about how much he still ached for her) "...and then I got stuck in traffic because of that stupid film crew. Weird morning. Must be a full moon or something."

"Ah, yes. The film crew. I understand Turnbull paid you a visit. He was very disturbed to hear that someone had vandalized a Canadian flag."

Ray shot him an irritated glance. "Yeah, disturbed is right. Why was there a Canadian flag hanging there, anyway?"

"Most of the cast and crew are Canadian, and after one of the American actors hoisted an American flag outside his trailer, they responded as a sort of joke." Fraser read through the file as he spoke. "The American flag was untouched, and nothing else was stolen or vandalized."

"So we've got someone who hates Canadians?" It sounded so...unnatural. The words seemed terribly wrong coming out of his mouth. No, that couldn't be it. "It coulda been just a prank. Maybe some gang liked the design and took it for their colors."

Fraser looked up from the file. "I don't think so, Ray. I wasn't there this morning because I was helping prepare some tapes for analysis. The Canadian Consulate has received credible threats on the life of Tony Klein, the actor portraying the character of Justin Powell."

"Oh, you gotta be kiddin' me. Credible threats? From who, someone else who sat in their car staring out the windshield for an extra hour this morning? Now that I can understand." But even as he spoke, Ray felt his stomach start to knot. His gut feeling had been right. "It kinda fits, though," he conceded after a long moment. "You see the flag?"

"No. After a brief telephone interview, we advised her to go straight to the local authorities."

"Fraser, it looked real weird, like something was chewin' on it. I didn't want her to worry, so I told her some crazy fan stole it as a souvenir. I knew it was a lie the second I opened my mouth."

"And Ms. Dottweiler? Did she know?"

Ray thought back over their conversation. "Eh, hard to tell. A real cutie, but slick. You can't trust those media types. She didn't tell me everything, that's for sure." He let out a long sigh. "So what about the calls? When do you think you can ID the guy? It was a guy, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was definitely a male voice. The first call was too short to trace, and the sound quality on the second call led me to believe that it was placed from a cellular phone, which will take some time to follow back--"

"And probably turn out to be stolen anyway," Ray finished.

"Yes, precisely. The tapes are already being analyzed, but it may be some time before the person or persons behind the threats are apprehended."

Ray frowned. "So what can we do about it?"

"Turn here. We can ask a few questions on the set, keep an eye on filming, and implement any necessary security measures for Mr. Klein. Now, turn left here, and we can park over there."

A rotund, bored-looking rent-a-cop ambled toward the car, one ear glued to a cell phone. Fraser pulled a fax out of the folder and showed it to the watchman with a polite smile. Without pausing in his conversation, the watchman nodded and languidly waved them through.

"We'll need to update Ms. Dottweiler on the new developments and perform a security review," Fraser said as they got out of the car and headed through a makeshift gate marked 'Badges Required Beyond This Point.'

"OK, I'll update, you review," Ray volunteered, perhaps a touch too eagerly, but Fraser just nodded absently.

The movie set looked like an anthill and sounded like Bangkok at rush hour. There were trucks and trailers spread around and piles of cables as thick as Ray's arm snaking through the set. One gaggle of people stood talking, smoking, sipping coffee, and munching snacks near the back end of an enormous tractor-trailer, while another group congregated around a wardrobe trailer. Other small circles of people in wildly incongruent outfits were chatting and laughing between shots, and a number of wild-eyed interns darted madly through the throngs bearing props, messages, revised script pages, ringing cell phones, snacks, bottles of water, and various other items. The air thrummed with the sound of generators, calls of "Look out! Comin' through!" as equipment carts were wheeled around, and the low buzz of conversation and general frenzied activity. Ray and Fraser stopped and looked around, unsure where to begin.

Diefenbaker was completely unfazed by the hubbub. He air-scented for a moment, realized an intern in the distance was swinging a bag of raspberry jelly-filled doughnuts in one hand, his all-time favorite food, and tore off after him, licking his lips in anticipation of the "kill."

Fraser snapped out of his paralysis and gave chase, the wolf's white flanks flashing a few paces ahead. "Dief, no!" he yelled, forgetting that it would do no good.

Diefenbaker raced around a corner, sprinted toward the side door of a run-down brick building, and leapt into the air to collect his prize, but he was a second too late. The intern, chattering nonstop into his headset, opened the sturdy metal door just enough to slip inside before Dief could reach him, and the wolf managed only to bounce resoundingly off the door and make an awkward three-point landing on the asphalt.

Fraser skidded up a moment later, torn between anger, embarrassment, and a grim satisfaction that the wolf had gotten what he deserved. Dief immediately plopped down in front of the door, panting in exhaustion and frustration that his prey had escaped him, and looked meekly skyward at his master.

Fraser shook his head in disgust, taking off his hat and bending over to talk to Dief directly face-to-muzzle. "Diefenbaker, you're just embarrassing yourself."

The wolf gave him a mid-pitch reply that was part protest and part "Who, me?"

"I thought we had agreed you wouldn't do this anymore. If that intern had noticed you pursuing him like that, he would have had quite a fright! There's only one word to describe your actions."

Dief made a rising sound that sounded like a guess.

"Oh, hardly," Fraser said severely. "Try 'disgraceful.'"

Dief whined softly, mournfully, and graced Fraser's neck with a quick lick of apology. Then the door flew open as suddenly as it had slammed shut. Dief managed to squirm out of the way just in time, but Fraser was not as fortunate and was smacked roundly on the forehead as he leapt to his feet. "Oh, I...I'm terribly sorry," he offered uncertainly, trying to resist the temptation to massage the sore spot.

A tall, spindly, pinched-looking woman stood there, her salt-and-pepper hair trying desperately to escape its tight bun, no fewer than three clipboards stacked in one arm. At first she seemed to look right through him, but then her dark eyes lit in astonishment. "Justin! I've been looking all over the set for you! What the hell are you doing in that outlandish outfit? Were you all screwing around in the wardrobe truck again? Never mind, Stillwell's steaming, the whole shot is waiting for you, we've got to hur-ry!" Without further ado, the woman grabbed him by the arm, her fingers closing around his bicep like strands of barbed wire, and marched him around the back side of the building toward an intersection that was obviously closed off for filming purposes.

Fraser, momentarily dazed by his encounter with the door and this stranger who was making no sense whatsoever, attempted a tentative, "Ma'am? I don't think--"

"No, sometimes you don't," she snapped.

"No, ma'am, there's been a mistake. You see, I--"

"Am holding up the entire cast and crew because I had to wander off and sneak a cigarette even though my contract says I won't smoke for the duration of shooting!" she roared back.

The woman's outburst stopped Fraser cold. He was now in the middle of an intersection filled with fake police cars, some of which were wrecked. Several people sat in chairs on the opposite sidewalk, grouped around a camera and monitor, and many others were standing around in police uniforms and business clothing. A few wore masks and carried guns that Fraser's trained eye immediately identified as props. He couldn't help but notice that every single person on the set was openly staring at him. He shifted uncomfortably and realized he was turning as red as his tunic. The woman finally released her death grip on his arm and walked the rest of the way over to the knot of people in chairs.

A wiry, compact man, the light flashing off his silvery beard, rose from his chair and murmured a few words to her before turning to address the group. "OK, everyone, this is Scene 82, where Justin leaps out of his car just before it collides with the gasoline truck, and then he confronts the robbers. Hostages, we need you on your marks, officers at initial positions, walkers on the sidewalks in the same groupings and positions as yesterday, and robbers, you will be firing in this scene, so we'll work on the timing of the shots during these rehearsals and get the firing sequence worked out before we roll for picture, OK?"

Like a well-trained army, the mass of people moved quickly into position as the bearded man headed straight for Fraser with a man and a different woman right behind him. Fraser eyed her nervously, hoping he wouldn't be subjected to any more strange outbursts.

"I don't know how he ended up in that," the man sighed, flipping through a pile of heavily marked script pages. "The only guy we have in red in this picture is the hotel doorman. The boots are gorgeous, though." He brought a walkie-talkie to his lips and barked, "Maya, quick, come bring me a standard short-sleeve Justin Powell police shirt--yes, with insignia!--the blue summer-weight pants, and the standard black uniform shoes."

"Tony," the bearded man greeted Fraser amiably, "I know it's on the chilly side this morning, but why are you wearing the doorman's coat?"

Fraser opened his mouth to reply, relieved that he would at last be able to put an end to this gross misunderstanding, and promptly choked as the woman, an attractive brunette in her early 30's, nonchalantly reached up and proceeded to fluff his hair.

"Oh, dear, excuse me," Fraser managed to splutter in his shock, unconsciously backing away and raising an arm to his face to deter the woman from continuing. He was certainly no stranger to subtle and not-so-subtle advances from the fairer sex, but hair fluffing? That was a new one. Heavens, just how far would these Chicago women go?

"Tony?" the woman said in puzzlement, looking more closely at Fraser's face. Her gaze lingered on his features for a moment, and then she hooted with laughter. "Good God! Genevieve, this isn't Tony Klein at all! You look just like him, though...it's incredible! Absolutely amazing!" She shook her head in wonder.

The bearded man stepped forward. "I'm Don Stillwell, the director of this picture. And who might you be?"

At last. This was a question he knew how to handle. He cleared his throat and extended a hand to Mr. Stillwell. "Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father, and for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I remained, attached as liaison officer at the Canadian Consulate." He put his Stetson back on and leveled the brim with a deft flick of his hand, beginning to feel a little more in control of the situation.

Stillwell burst into laughter. "That's marvelous! What a great back-story you've thought up! You're very talented, you know that?" He clapped Fraser appreciatively on the arm, but his laughter died as Fraser stood silently and maintained eye contact with Stillwell, a hint of bewildered exasperation creeping into the Mountie's expression.

"No, it's true," Fraser continued, trying to regain his composure, "although admittedly, it does not explain my presence here today. My superior officer, Inspector Margaret Thatcher of the Canadian Consulate, sent me here to investigate a possible act of vandalism, as well as the death threats lodged earlier today against one Tony Klein, actor. I'm afraid the file was assembled rather hastily, and I wasn't provided with a photograph. You say there's a...resemblance...between us?"

The man who had complimented his boots and the brunette woman looked at each other with raised eyebrows and nodded vigorously. "You're a dead ringer for Tony Klein," the man said, his practiced eye looking Fraser up and down. "I'd say you're within half an inch on height and maybe five pounds on weight, and you've got the same build. Hell, I bet you've got the same neck and inseam measurements."

The brunette stared at him with equal intensity. "The face is maybe a touch more angular, and the hair is a little shorter...the eyes might be a shade lighter, if it isn't just the effect of all that red, but the other features are remarkably similar, and he definitely has the same skin type. Amazing. I've never seen anything like it."

A young woman holding some clothing ran up and stopped in her tracks. Fraser was beginning to feel suspiciously like a horse at auction. Hopefully they wouldn't open his mouth and start going on about how similar his teeth were! "That may be so," he said, with a quick tug on one ear, "but this means that Mr. Klein's whereabouts are still unknown. In light of the recent threats against him, this is cause for concern."

"Yo, Fraser!" Kowalski called, popping into view with Dief at his heels. "The gang's all here, or they will be in a minute, anyway. I found Dot outside the fancy-schmanzy interview room. Klein's just finishing up something or other with some TV crew. Dot said she'd bring him over."

"Thank you, Ray. Your timing is impeccable. This is Don Stillwell, the director of this film, and--"

Ray's face lit up as he shook Stillwell's hand. "Don Stillwell! Wow, this is an honor. I loved Desert Commandos and Knockout Punch. The stunts were incredible! And Street Racer...I've worn out my tape, I watched it like a hundred times. Hey, um, if you wouldn't mind...could I get an autograph?" He went through his pockets, frantically trying to find something for Stillwell to sign. An old Life Saver, a crumpled gum wrapper, a Chapstick, three pennies...

"Ray, we're on duty," Fraser reminded him. "Maybe later. Mr. Stillwell, this is Detective Ray Vecchio of the Chicago Police Department."

"It's always a pleasure to meet a fan, Detective, but you give me too much credit. It's the crew that really determines how a picture turns out. We're fortunate to have some terrific people with us this time out." Stillwell gestured to the man and woman standing nearby. "Such as Greg Pritchard, my AD, and Sheila Davenport, Assistant Makeup."

Greg and Sheila seemed genuinely pleased by the director's praise as they exchanged handshakes and "Pleased to meet yous" with Fraser and Ray.

"Don, we're here!" a female voice rang out. The group turned to see Dot waving and a dark-haired man who looked familiar. Oddly familiar. Eerily familiar...

"Du Doppelgaenger, du bleicher Geselle," Fraser murmured in astonishment. The man approaching him could have been his twin brother! This could only be Tony Klein, and now he understood why Greg and Sheila had made such a fuss. The resemblance was positively unsettling. He did note, however, that Tony's carriage was much more relaxed, and his gait more rolling than his own. Tony was grinning and gesturing, apparently telling the woman a story with great gusto, and then they both dissolved in laughter. He seemed very much at ease and brimming with energy.

Then Tony's eyes met Fraser's, and all expression drained from his face in mid-guffaw. The two men stared at each other in stunned disbelief for several seconds, but it was Tony who recovered first, an impish smile once again lighting his features. "Well, either I had too much tequila last night, or the production company secretly cloned me so they could fire my sorry ass. Which is it?"

Fraser cleared his throat, still rooted to the ground. "Neither one, Mr. Klein. This is...just an extraordinary coincidence, I assure you. My name is Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I'm here at the behest of Inspector Margaret Thatcher of the Canadian Consulate here in Chicago."

Ray leaned in toward Fraser. "Are you sure you don't have any brothers?" He was still wide-eyed in disbelief.

"Quite sure."

"Maybe I had too much tequila last night...no, wait, I don't drink tequila. Maybe I'm just having a really weird dream."

"I don't think so, Ray." Fraser turned back to his mirror image. "Mr. Klein, this is my partner, Detective Ray Vecchio of the Chicago Police Department."

Tony gave Ray a good, vigorous handshake, his expression serious, but the mischievous glint still lingering in his eyes. "Good morning, Detective. What can I do for you? This isn't about the practical joke we played on Patrick, is it? That was just a little on-the-set prank, honest!"

Greg and Sheila burst out laughing, and Tony grinned back at them. "If you want my professional opinion," Sheila giggled, "I think he looks great with green hair."

"Uh, no, no, of course not," said Ray. He and Fraser exchanged a split-second look that said, Not here, not now. And Dot nodded, a movement so slight he would have missed it if he hadn't been looking for it. He had given Dot a hurried run-down outside the interview room, and she had agreed to keep the news to herself and watch Tony like a hawk. "You're not in any trouble or anything, it's just...is there somewhere a little more private where we could talk? Just a few minutes...if that'd be OK with you." There. He'd said it...awkwardly, but he'd gotten it out. Judging by the eyebrows already going up, he had still revealed too much.

"Sure, but we're already behind schedule, and we really need to finish this sequence. How about lunch? It'd be great to get off the set and get some real Chicago grub..." Tony trailed off hopefully.

"Sure."

"Great. We'll break for lunch around three."

"Three in the afternoon? That's when actors eat lunch?"

"It's usually more like five," noted Tony with a shrug. "When you shoot until two in the morning, a five o'clock lunch is perfect."

"Yikes. And I thought we humped a rotten job..."

***

"Mr. Klein, I'm sorry to interrupt your lunch, but could I have your autograph for my mother? I didn't want to ask you before, during the interview, but it would mean the world to her..." A burly blue-eyed man stood next to Tony, nervously fingering the cord securing his "Channel 6 Crew" badge.

It took a moment, but then Tony's eyes lit in recognition. "Oh, right, you were with that last crew!" He smiled. "Sure, I'd be glad to." Fraser handed him a pen and a piece of paper, and Tony wrote a few words to an 'Edith' and signed his name as the man's eyes flicked back and forth between Tony's face and the paper.

"Thanks," he said, taking the piece of paper and folding it neatly in half, "I really appreciate this!" He turned and left, still holding the paper reverently in two hands.

Ray watched the man leave with a faint head-shake of bemusement, then turned back to Tony. "...And stuff like that is exactly what I'm talking about. You got to keep a low profile until we get this guy in custody."

Tony stared down into his coffee with a frown, stirring it with much clanking of the tinny diner spoon. Dot sat next to him, her legal pad already scrawled full of notes, listening intently. "So because someone steals a flag, and then some half-wit calls up the Consulate and says he's going to kill me, I have to tiptoe around and be afraid of my own shadow?" Tony fixed the Mountie and the cop across the table with a hard, angry stare and tossed the spoon down onto the stained Formica tabletop with a clang. "Bullshit. These may be two completely unrelated things, for all we know. Don't make a big deal out of this, especially the crank caller. People like that are only looking for one thing: attention. Ignore him, and you'll never hear another peep." Tony's fingers wandered to a pocket, extracted a cigarette, and lit it almost reflexively.

"Mr. Klein," Fraser interjected, "doesn't your contract prohibit you from--"

"Unenforceable." Dot spoke up, her tone matter-of-fact. "Clauses like that have been struck down in court. Genevieve's just a sore loser."

"Genevieve, is she the one that looks like the Wicked Witch of the West?" Ray asked.

Dot made an unbecoming face. "Looks like her? She is her. I told her this morning that Tony would be doing an interview, and she still made a big stink about not being able to find him. Everyone hates her."

"So why can't someone fire her?"

"Because she's the director's sister." Dot's tight-lipped smile was anything but.

Ray understood immediately. "Ah, politics."

Dot nodded again and took a deep breath. "Yes...but forget about her. What are we going to do about this problem? I want this guy caught, and I want it done discreetly. The press will have a field day with this if it gets out."

Now was the time to test her. "What if he's right and we're making a big deal over nothing? Maybe it's two separate things: one petty thief, one guy desperate for attention." Ray tried to sound nonchalant and slightly bored.

She leaned in, taking the bait. "Detective, with all due respect, if you believe that, you need to find another line of work."

"Oh? Why's that?" Now he would get it out of her--whatever it was she wouldn't tell him at the station. She looked away, then down at the floor, and let out a breath. Ray leaned back and waited her out. Silence was the best way to keep the other guy talking.

"I wasn't completely honest with you this morning. I...withheld something from you. And you," she added, with a glance at Tony.

I knew it! Ray thought triumphantly. He indicated the four of them at the table. "It's just us here now." C'mon, trust me. Spill your guts.

Dot pressed her lips together, then nodded and pulled a plastic bag out of her briefcase. "This was attached to the remains of the flag. With a straight pin, no less." Again, she smoothed the plastic to give him a better look at the contents. Ray, Fraser, and Tony all leaned in to see.

It was a note. Written in an angular, neat script, it read simply, "This is only the beginning. You are thieves. Give back what you have stolen or face the consequences."

Ray peered closely at the paper. Fingerprints didn't usually take on cloth, but paper held them nicely. "How many people touched this before you bagged it?"

"Just me and two or three crew members who helped me get the flag down."

Fraser frowned as he noted the words on the paper. "What do you think you could have 'stolen'?"

Dot pondered for a moment. "We've had a few complaints about traffic and noise problems. Maybe we've 'robbed' some crabby old lady of her peace and quiet."

"In downtown Chicago?" Ray's tone suggested that there wasn't much peace and quiet to be had in that neighborhood under the best of circumstances.

Dot shrugged. "Or maybe..."

"What?"

"We had to fire a sound tech about two weeks ago, in Toronto. Jim something. He was drunk on the job, and more than once. You don't suppose he could have followed us down here?"

"Maybe, but would he slash up a Canadian flag?" Ray moved the bag to his corner of the table. "We'll get this in to Forensics right away, and you'll need to send down the guys who handled this so we can print 'em."

Fraser noted that Tony and Dot still held themselves with a certain tension and decided to fish just a bit more. "Has anything else happened during this shoot that we should be aware of?"

Dot and Tony exchanged a look. "Now that you mention it, yes," Tony admitted. "We had some weird problems in Toronto."

"What sort of problems?"

Coffee slopped over the rim of Dot's cup as she put it down. "Nothing big, just all kinds of little things...the A/C at the soundstage quit working the week it was so hot, the cars had weird mechanical problems, lights and mikes were conking out at odd times, and we somehow managed to lose a reel of film and had to re-shoot four scenes. Management was furious. I thought it would stop once we fired the sound tech, but it didn't."

Ray pounced. "Sabotage."

She tilted her head to the right, considering, not confirming, not denying. "Possibly."

Fraser's eyebrows lifted a full quarter-inch. "Ma'am, wouldn't you say that the previous incidents in Toronto increase the likelihood that these occurrences are in fact all related and of a piece?"

"I suppose so."

"Then I would respectfully suggest two things: that we begin drawing up a list of suspects, and that we take all necessary measures to protect Mr. Klein. If the caller was serious--and I am inclined to believe that he was--he has only this evening, Thursday, and Friday to act."

The group quickly left the restaurant, deep in conversation about how they would proceed. They never noticed that the autograph seeker was staring a hole through the group, his expression unreadable.

***

Mark Caldwell lifted the cold, frothy beer to his lips and drained half the mug at once.

"Hey, take it easy there," the bartender said, "you got all night to get soused."

"If I wanna hear crap like that, Earl, I can go home and hear it from my mom."

Earl just chuckled and dried off another glass. "How is she, anyway?"

"Just the same." Mark ran his thumb up and down the side of his mug, pushing condensation around like a miniature windshield wiper. "She still thinks I'm some hotshot movie guy who came back 'cause Dad died, not 'cause LA shit all over me. Dutiful son, my ass."

"Maybe you should come clean, tell her the truth. You owe her that much."

"And maybe you should shut your yap."

Earl wisely decided to back off for a minute, pretending to take an interest in the horse races blaring from the television as he served another customer at the other end of the bar. When he came back to collect the four empty mugs at Mark's right elbow, he switched to a more neutral topic. "I haven't seen you around much lately. You working again?"

"Yeah. I'm pointin' a camera for Channel 6. Just 'til Friday, but it's the best gig I've had in a while."

"Oh, yeah?" Earl's eyebrows, two enormous woolybears, rose at the news. "You play your cards right, maybe this could be your ticket back."

Mark drained his mug and thunked it down on the bar. "I doubt it. All those blowhards in LA care about is who you know." He pulled a crumpled ten-dollar bill from the pocket of his T-shirt, dislodging a small piece of white paper onto the bar in the process. "Here, I gotta go." He tossed the bill in Earl's general direction and slid off the stool.

"Hey, don't go dumpin' your trash on my bar. This is yours." Earl picked up the piece of paper and opened it. "Another autograph for your mom?" His pendulous lips curled into a smirk as he handed the paper back to Mark. "I see your technique is improving."

"Shut up, man. This one's the real thing."

"The few, the proud..."

Mark flipped Earl the bird over his shoulder as he walked out of the bar.

He was careful to take off his "Channel 6 Crew" badge and stuff it in a back pocket before he unlocked the door to his mother's apartment. He tried to ignore the specks of paint that fell from the frame like sodden confetti as he forced the ill-fitting door open. His nose was immediately assailed by the smells of boiled cabbage and sausage, which did not sit at all well with his alcohol-addled stomach.

A woman's head popped into view from the doorway to the kitchen. "Mark!" The neat gray curls on her head bounced along with the rest of her considerable heft as she came to take his jacket. "Hello, sweetie pie." She drew him in for a hug. "How was work?"

Mark accepted his mother's embrace with a weak smile, his stomach flip-flopping uncomfortably as his mother squeezed. "Great, Ma, just great. Hey, I've got a little surprise for you."

She released him and looked up at him eagerly.

Mark pulled a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and laid it in his mother's calloused palm.

Her jaw fell open as she read the sweeping handwriting. "Oh! Oh! Oh! You finally cornered Tony Klein!" She twirled around in her excitement, reading the message again at arm's length to be sure she'd seen correctly. "Oh, honey, thank you!"

She was beaming with pleasure as she moved to the wall next to the solid but shopworn dining set and removed a large framed collage hanging there. A mosaic of pictures of her son with various movie stars, many of them anything but household names, and notes addressed to Edith on everything from craft service napkins to Post-It(r) notes jockeyed for space within the frame. She removed the backing from the collage and made a big fuss over putting Tony Klein's autograph in a prominent position before returning the frame to its place of honor.

She stepped back to have a look at the new and improved collage. "Just wait until Mrs. Polter sees this!" She impetuously grabbed her son's face and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Honey, I can't thank you enough for this. I'm so proud of you, working day in and day out with the big stars, and you don't let it go to your head, either. That's the mark of a true professional."

"Aww, Ma," he protested, "shooting movies is like any other job, except the hours are longer."

She was still smiling as she returned from the kitchen with two bowls of stew and a beer that she set reverently at her son's place at the table. "Here. Sit down and have your supper and tell me all the interesting things that happened today."

Mark's mind whirled as he struggled to come up with something. He kept his mouth full of stew and beer to give himself a minute to think. Maybe something with...no, that would never fly. He sorted through three or four alternatives before he settled on one. "Well, we were doing this scene where Tony had to drop down to one knee, with his other leg out behind him, and fire his gun over the hood of a car. Only when he had to, you know, squat down real quick, there was this big chhht! sound. His pants tore open right down the middle of his rear end!"

His mother laughed in delight. He had chosen well.

"And then," he continued, relishing the moment, "three guys held a big tarp around him so he could take them off without, you know, showing off his underwear. They handed his pants to the wardrobe mistress and she sewed them right then and there and handed them back inside the tarp. The whole thing was fixed inside of five minutes."

"Oh, Mark, how funny! If you put all these stories together, you could write a book! Wouldn't that be something, to see my little boy's name on the cover of a book?"

"Oh, I could write a book, all right." He put the beer to his lips, but a sudden surge of nausea choked him.

His eyes went wide. "'Scuse me." He jumped up from the table.

It was a good thing the apartment was so small, or he never would have made it in time. He slammed the bathroom door and heaved into the toilet again and again until he had nothing left.

His mother knocked on the door. "Mark? Mark! Are you OK in there?"

Mark cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm fine. Listen, I'm just going to take a quick shower, and then I have to get back to the set. There's a night shoot going on tonight and I have to be there." He was, in fact, not on again until tomorrow morning, but she didn't need to know that. One more lie on the steaming shit pile of deceit.

There was a pause. "Well...all right, sweetie. I'll pack you up some food, OK?"

"Thanks, Ma." He felt like the lowest worm on Earth.

"I love you!"

Mark flushed the toilet so he wouldn't have to answer. He watched in disgusted fascination as the vomit swirled around and around before going down the toilet. Just like his life.

***

Later that evening, in a hotel bathroom only a few miles north, and yet worlds away, Dot carefully removed the day's makeup, making a face at her reflection when she saw the size and hue of the bags under her eyes. No amount of makeup could completely cover those up. She was dead tired, as usual. Most of the crew, as well as Vecchio and Fraser, were still out at the set, but one of the perks of being a PR person was that you went home earlier than everyone else. Of course, in this business, "early" was anything before midnight.

Damn! She'd managed to chip a nail sometime during the day. Well, that would never do. She extracted a file from her leather toiletries bag and smoothed the ragged edge down. She held the offending nail up to the light and eyed it critically. Marginal, but passable.

She finished her beauty routine with a moisturizer and turned her attention to extricating herself from her clothing. She wriggled out of her suit like a snake shedding its skin and carefully hung the items up in the closet to keep them from wrinkling.

She strolled back into the bedroom area and put on her peach silk pajamas before flopping into bed with the TV remote, a wine glass, and an almost-full bottle of Chardonnay she'd stashed in the mini-fridge. She put two pillows between her back and the headboard, wriggled around until she was comfortably upright, and grabbed the bottle.

She poured the wine, watching the light play off the golden liquid as it tumbled into her glass, and flipped absent-mindedly through the channels as she sipped. A pleasant, warm feeling soon bloomed in her chest. She tried to relax, but she was in her usual state of being too exhausted to fall asleep.

God, what a day. The three TV interviews had been the easiest part of it by far. It was the other stuff that had her mind spinning: the ripped-up flag, the death threats, the weird lunch with the cop and the Mountie who looked so much like Tony it made her--

Wait a minute, what was on that last channel? She flipped back and peered more intently at the screen.

Tony, or rather his character, was talking earnestly to his "wife," reassuring her that even if the big asteroid did wipe out the Earth, he'd always love her and only her.

Dot practically choked as she laughed through the Chardonnay. Well, if it wasn't New Moon Rising! She had done the PR work for that movie, too. She raised her glass in mocking tribute, offered the screen a rousing raspberry, then downed the rest of her wine in one gulp and refilled the glass.

The clichd action-movie dialogue soon made her push the "Mute" button, leaving her free to contemplate the shadows playing out across Tony's face. The words spilling from his mouth might have been hackneyed and silly, but the subtle changes in his expression through a look or a twitch of his lips were perfect, neither overblown nor wooden. He took his "wife" into his arms and gave her a long, passionate kiss.

Dot sighed and rolled the rim of the glass back and forth across her lips, savoring its coolness as she thought back to the New Moon Rising wrap party where she had ended up locking lips with him herself--strictly off-camera, of course. Tony Klein was known in the industry as a work-hard, play-hard kind of guy, and wrap parties tended to get a little wild in any case. Mixing Tony Klein with an oceanside wrap party had resulted in a legendary blowout on a beautiful California summer night, with the moon (in the first quarter and waxing, not new) reflecting off the surf, and a huge bonfire crackling invitingly.

The booze had flowed even more freely than usual, and after some drunken singing around the campfire, more drinking games, and then a beach volleyball tournament, everyone had loosened up quite a bit. Maybe a little too much, in fact. Dot could hold her liquor--it was a requirement in her line of work--but she, like every other female there, had really tied one on that night and started flirting rather audaciously with Tony. That kind of behavior was professional suicide, but she hadn't been able to resist.

She and Tony went up at the same time for the volleyball as it came over the net and whacked heads. They fell to the sand, alternately groaning and laughing, and removed themselves from the makeshift court to get some ice for the lumps already forming. One thing led to another: lumps were gently checked, ice was playfully shoved down certain items of clothing, faces were stroked, and then Dot had been only mildly surprised to find herself initiating a brief, rather clumsy, alcohol-powered make-out session with a married man who would never be more than a colleague.

She could feel her face heating just thinking about it, and rolled the glass over onto her cheek. Even now, two years later, she wasn't sure exactly how she felt: embarrassed, foolish, and, inexplicably, angry at Tony for not stopping her, as juvenile as the thought was.

And worst of all, she felt wistful. She wished they could have had something a little nicer than a sixty-second drunken interlude on the beach. She'd had a giddy schoolgirl crush on the man for most of the shoot, and for months afterwards, she'd had matching idiotic fantasies about rescuing him from some life-threatening situation, consoling him after his wife left him for another man, or getting him such great press coverage that he became the next Tom Cruise and ran off with her out of sheer gratitude. She shook her head in disgust at her own stupidity and drained her glass once more, feeling even more restless than before.

There was no way she'd be able to fall asleep now. Maybe a walk would clear her head. She could use a little fresh air.

She quickly changed and re-did her makeup before grabbing a jacket. It gave her a perverse sense of satisfaction to point the remote at Tony's exquisite face and jab the Off button, zapping him into blackness.

***

"That was the most boring day of my life," Ray grumbled, wishing he could get off his aching feet for a minute. "Fifty takes of the exact same thing, the same lines over and over again, like one of those dolls where you pull a little string in their back." He mimed pulling a string out of his own back. "'Step out of the car and put your hands above your head!' 'Step out of the car and put your hands above your head!' No wonder so many actors do drugs."

"Actually, movie crews are very interesting sociological constructs," Fraser enthused, walking alongside him in the semi-darkness of the set, now quiet after a long day of filming. "They're excellent models of interdependence: highly hierarchical, yet placing great value on each individual and his contribution toward a single goal. They have many points of commonality with Inuit clan structures."

"Yeah, fascinating," said Ray, in a tone that suggested the exact opposite. "The only good thing about shooting until 2 a.m. is, it's only going to be dark for another four, maybe five hours." He glanced at Tony's trailer as they passed it, stifling a yawn. Dief lay on the landing outside the far door, snoring robustly. "At least one of us gets to sleep tonight."

"No one is going to get past us to disturb Mr. Klein, and with the extra guards around the perimeter of the set and at the crew hotel, we should be all right." Fraser waved to the two watchmen on the north side of their loop. "Good morning, Chester, David."

They returned the wave politely, if a bit sluggishly. "Twenty-five," they called out.

"Twenty-five what?" puzzled Ray.

"Laps," said Fraser. "We've passed their post twenty-five times. I asked them to call out 'twenty-five,' 'fifty,' 'one hundred,' and so on as we pass by them."

"Why?"

"It's more for them than us. It keeps them alert for movement and gives them something to do."

"Oh." That seemed smart. He needed something to keep him alert, too. His eyes felt like they'd had a whole beach dumped into them. "So who do you figure is doin' this?"

Fraser rubbed his eyebrow absently as he pondered. "The perpetrator is obviously very angry, and motivated by something very personal."

Ray nodded. "And very Canadian."

"Yes. However, I'd also speculate that this person has few, if any, prior offenses on his record."

"How do you figure?"

"Assuming he's responsible for everything thus far, the attacks in Toronto were very low-key. He targeted property, not people, and he did it in ways that could be attributed to chance rather than a concerted effort to disrupt filming. That implies he has at least some conscience."

"Or that he's just a big chicken afraid of gettin' caught. Do you really think this guy is serious about offing Actor Boy in there?" Ray jerked his head back toward Tony's trailer, Dief's snoring still faintly audible in the distance.

"I don't think we can afford to assume otherwise." Fraser was beginning to feel the day weighing down on his shoulders and thought longingly of his cot back at the Consulate, but quickly pushed the image from his mind. "And, of course, he's mechanically handy, and he works in film or television."

"You think it's one of the crew?"

"It's possible, although everyone we talked to today spoke kindly of Mr. Klein. He's well-liked."

Ray shrugged. "Of course they're going to kiss up in public, he's the star. And for every one person we did talk to, there were three others we missed. Dot said there are over 400 people involved with this week's shoot."

"That's more than the population of Rat River," Fraser noted, impressed. "Good morning, Paul, Jack," he called to the watchmen at the south end of their loop.

"Twenty-five," they groaned as he passed by.

"Speaking of Dot," Ray forged on, "how do we know this whole thing isn't just a PR stunt to grab some publicity for her film? This smells like Orsini all over again."

"She specifically said she didn't want this to get out to the press, and she seemed sincere."

"Yeah, but think, Fraser. Has anyone been hurt? No. And how expensive was the stuff that got busted up in Toronto? A mike here, a lightbulb there...she does a couple hundred bucks' damage and gets all kinds of publicity for it."

"You don't trust her, do you?"

"Not any farther than I can throw her, no. She's media. She's a snake-oil seller. And didn't someone say once, 'There's no such thing as bad publicity'?"

"Yes, an Irish writer by the name of Brendan Behan," Fraser couldn't help supplying. "Although the full quote was 'There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.'"

"Yeah, whatever. Stay with me here. When I was a kid, I used to come home from school and watch Scooby-Doo every day."

Fraser gave him a totally blank look.

"On TV," Ray added.

Fraser still looked befuddled.

"Right, I guess you watched dog sled races after school. It was about these kids and a dog runnin' around solving mysteries, and you know what?"

Fraser just shook his head.

"Every time there was some spooky ghost or monster or whatever, it always turned out that the bad guy was just dressing up as the monster, or using spooky lighting or something, so everyone would stay away, and he could keep the gold or diamonds or bank robbery money all for himself!" Ray finished triumphantly.

Fraser absently scratched his throat, trying and failing to see the connection. "I'm sorry, but I don't quite see--"

"The no such thing as bad publicity! She's making up the spooky guy who's gonna kill Tony to get tons of free publicity!"

"Oh," said Fraser. "Oh, yes, now I see. Well, that's certainly a possibility, Ray."

They walked in silence for a while, each man lost in his own thoughts and growing fatigue. Much to his chagrin, Ray's mental jukebox decided to put the Scooby-Doo theme song on permanent repeat. They trudged circle after circle after circle around the set. The night seemed endless.

Some time after Chester and David (or was it Paul and Jack?) croaked out, "Hundred n' twenty-five," a deep "Woof! woof!" from Dief shattered the peaceful night air. Both men instantly snapped to full alertness and took off at a dead run for Tony's trailer. A few seconds later, the barking stopped just as suddenly as it had begun, and Fraser felt his heart leap into his throat. If someone dared lay a finger on his four-footed friend...

They arrived to find a little old lady patting Dief and cooing blissful nothings to him in heavily accented English. Dief sat there, tongue lolling, a goofy canine grin on his face, clearly enjoying the woman's ministrations.

"Why, hello there," she looked over to them with a big smile that revealed a shiny gold incisor on one side, "is this your dog? He's a very pretty piesek, aren't you, boy?" She made silly kissing noises at Dief, who seemed to enjoy every lip-read one of them.

Ray, still breathing hard, advanced on her, but Fraser held out an arm to stop him. "Why, yes, ma'am, he is my dog," he replied smoothly. "I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but you must have come a bit too close to the door there for his comfort."

"Not intentional? Young man," she squinted over at Fraser in the shadows, "you tell me now, what time is it?"

Fraser angled his wrist up to catch the light of the full moon, now low in the September sky. "It is four fifty-eight a.m., ma'am."

"Then my intention is most certainly to be here," she concluded stubbornly, and banged repeatedly on the door with a gnarled hand. "Tony! Makeup! Don't tell me you forget!" A muffled groan came from within. "To makeup! You are there in five minutes, young man!"

"Be right there," Tony called sleepily from within. "It's OK, guys, she's one of us."

Ray finally realized he was still tense, ready for a fight, and shook himself loose. "Come on, Fraser," he said, "the craft truck won't be open for another hour. Let's catch a few z's in the car and then get some coffee."

Dief barked.

"OK, OK. And some donuts."

Dief led the way toward the Intrepid, grinning from ear to ear.

***

"Tony? Tooooh-niiiih..."

"Urrrgh..." Tony blinked his eyes open. He'd dozed off in the makeup chair again. Five a.m. makeup calls were quite possibly the worst thing on Earth. Well, maybe right after four a.m. makeup calls. There'd been no point in going back to the hotel for the scant three hours between the end of last night's filming and this horrifically early start. The first two weeks of a film shoot were always great fun, the middle weeks were a pleasant routine, and the last two weeks always made him swear he'd never do another film. Thank God they were wrapping tomorrow!

"Don't you sleep on me now, kochany," Dagmara's thick accent broke through the fog. "You mess up this pretty gash I spend half my life making, and I give you a real one," she threatened affectionately, staring down pointedly over her glasses at him. She dabbed a bit of color onto the back of a hand half-covered in age spots, angled it into the light to scrutinize, and muttered something in Polish before bending over his cheek once more.

Tony half-smiled and took a deep breath to rouse himself. Daga, as she was known, loved to bemoan her subjects' inability to sit still, stay awake, and keep their fingers from wandering to touch the special cuts, gashes, bruises, lacerations, and gunshot wounds she conjured up. The cast smilingly referred to her as "The Boo-Boo Queen," a title she delighted in.

***

Ray was trudging past an endless row of trailers, trying to reach the end and get to the set before he missed his cue. His line was, "You are under arrest for the murder of Tony Klein." He repeated it to himself, over and over, afraid he would forget it under pressure and make a fool of himself. He began to walk faster and faster, then broke into a run. The watchmen were eyeing him from between the sets of trailers, waving and calling, "Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven..." No matter how fast he ran, they were always there, and he couldn't seem to make any headway. Now they were dancing to the Scooby-Doo song, singing, "You're gonna have yourself a Scooby snack, that's a fact..." Yeah, I'm hungry, a snack would be nice, Ray thought, I bet they'll have something on the set. If he could just get there. He was now sprinting, and surprised he wasn't out of breath, but the set was still somewhere past these rows of trailers. Suddenly, a piercing riiiiiing! shattered the air. All of the watchmen grabbed their cell phones and started talking into them, but there was another, louder, riiiiiing! ...

...and Ray sat up so fast he whacked his head on the ceiling of the car. Fraser was also instantly awake in the passenger seat, and Dief made some grumbly stretchy noises in the back. God, what a dream!

"Vecchio," he mumbled into his phone.

"Detective, have you seen this morning's paper?" It was Dot, and she was not a happy camper by the sound of it.

"Umm, no. Why? What's up?" He rubbed at his eyes.

"I think it would be best if we could discuss this in person. I am on my way over to the set now. I'll be there in fifteen minutes...after I leave a message for your supervisor. Good-bye, Detective."

She was at least kind enough to wait for his fatigued, "Mmm, bye," before hanging up.

"What was that about?" asked Fraser.

Ray was still staring at the phone in utter confusion. "Dunno. She's coming over. Something about the paper. All I know is, I need some coffee, and I need it now."

"Good idea," agreed Fraser, and the three of them made a beeline for the craft truck. They managed to tuck away a large quantity of eggs, bacon, coffee and doughnuts (being careful to save half a jelly donut for Dief) before they saw Dot striding toward them, newspaper in hand.

"Good morning, Ms. Dottweiler." Fraser greeted her with a smile, extending a styrofoam cup in her direction. "Coffee?"

She peered carefully into the cup before accepting. "Certainly, thank you, Constable." She nodded curtly in Ray's direction. "Detective Vecchio."

"Dot," Ray replied just as curtly. "Uh, listen, would you mind tellin' us what's got you all in a tizzy? We were up all night protecting your guy, you know."

She looked around nervously. "Where is he now?"

"Not to worry, ma'am," Fraser said, "he's in the makeup trailer."

She relaxed. "Good. Daga will make sure he stays out of trouble. Now, would either of you mind telling me how this got out to the papers?" She pointed to a headline on the front page of the local section of the Guardian. It read, "DEATH THREATS PUT CANUCK HUNK IN FUNK," and had a picture of Tony looking down at the ground in his Justin Powell uniform. A small patch of out-of-focus red serge in one corner confirmed that this picture had been taken yesterday afternoon from behind the roadblocks where fans could watch the filming. "In about four hours, I'm going to be deluged with angry calls from LA, and I'm 'all in a tizzy' because I could lose my job. It's my responsibility to ensure that things like this stay on the set, and look what happened."

Ray still wasn't buying it, and his glance to Fraser said as much.

Fraser extended a hand toward the paper. "If I may?" Dot reluctantly handed it to him. "Thank you kindly. Did you talk to a Clark Kent at any time this week?" he asked, tapping the byline.

Dot shook her head emphatically.

"According to the text of this article, the information was provided by 'anonymous sources who spoke to The Guardian by phone.' That could be just about anyone. Why do you feel Detective Vecchio or I had something to do with it?" Fraser was still flawlessly polite in the way only he could manage.

Ray, however, was starting to feel decidedly surly, and went straight for the jugular. "For that matter, how do we know it wasn't you pullin' a Scooby-Doo?" he snapped.

***

"What time is it?" Tony asked Daga, suppressing a yawn. A smudge of pink was visible off to the east through the trailer window, and the morning symphony of city traffic, honking taxis, and the pffft! of transit buses' pneumatic brakes was just beginning to play in earnest.

She checked the clock on the opposite wall. "Eighteen after six. You had a long night, I know, so I am nice to you. I give you coffee-but you drink only from this side," she warned, tapping the unblemished left side of his face.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"No smiling until this sets! Don't ruin it," she blustered, before giving his shoulder an affectionate pat and inspecting the coffee still in the pot. In deference to her advanced years, Daga was given the end chair in the trailer, and both the door and the kitchen appliances were within easy reach.

"Today is your lucky day, this is only from yesterday. Two minutes in the meecro-wave, and it's like fresh!"

He began to smile before remembering her admonition. "You're too good to me," he deadpanned.

As she hunted for a clean mug, transferred the coffee into it, and tapped the necessary keys to bend the microwave to her will, Tony's eyes wandered over the pictures Daga had carefully taped around the entire expanse of her mirror. Some were in color, showing laughing children with stuffed reindeer or Easter eggs in their laps, and others were obviously much older, showing thin, dour couples and families glowering at him from their joyless black-and-white existences. All of the pictures were lovingly sheathed in clear plastic sleeves, so the tape she used never touched the pictures themselves. Even though they were only here for a week, she had insisted on bringing her "entourage" with her, telling Stillwell that leaving her family behind, even for a week, would be a terrible dishonor to them. Since she was dearly loved by the cast, and a great makeup artist to boot, her ancestors had indeed made the journey with her from Toronto to Chicago.

***

Dot was thrown completely off-balance by Ray's outburst. "Pulling a Scooby...what?"

Fraser intervened once more. "Ma'am, Detective Vecchio believes it is possible...although it is merely a tentative working hypothesis at this point...that you yourself had someone place those calls yesterday to spur a round of publicity for your film, resulting in coverage such as..." He gestured apologetically to the paper. "...this."

Dot looked ready to explode. "I most certainly did not! How dare you accuse me of making false threats!" she spat at Ray.

"Oh, yeah, but it's OK for you to finger us because you're a fancy-pants suit and we're just two dumb cops?" Ray shot back, all decorum forgotten.

***

"There." The microwave obligingly kicked into action. Daga saw Tony's eyes on her pictures and walked over to them, tapping an older one of a particularly sour-faced young man with a mustache. "That was my uncle Wladyslaw," she said, resuming her work on Tony's face, "just before the First World War broke out. Funny man, great sense of humor. You think the craft truck has bad coffee...during the war he made coffee from barley! Pretty terrible, too, my father said. He was something of a hero during the war, my father. He..."

Tony was suddenly distracted by the microwave and lost the thread of the conversation. It was making what could only be described as unnatural noises and...sparks?!

"Daga, hold up a second. Something's wrong with the microwave." He moved to rise from the chair, but Daga was absorbed in her artistry and did not step aside. Maybe Daga put tin foil over the top of the mug for some reason? He didn't want to ruin hours of work over a piece of tin foil.

The microwave made an ominous popping sound, and the outlet into which it was plugged began to smoke. So much for the tin foil theory. The microwave was apparently dying a spectacular death worthy of a special-effects crew. They needed to find the fuse box and cut the power to this place before it started a fire!

"Daga. Something is very wrong," he added more stridently. Daga had suspended her story about her heroic father, but was still bent over his face.

The smoke greatly increased in quantity, and now he saw flames licking out of the socket and beginning to spread up the wall. Oh, shit.

"Daga, stop!" He grabbed her wrist and moved the fine brush away from his cheek. "We have to get out! This trailer is *on fire*!"

Daga took one annoyed glance over at the fire, obviously wanting to wring its insignificant little neck for interrupting her work. "We put some water on it, it's OK!"

But Tony was already up and pulling her toward the door at the other end of the trailer. "No, it's an electrical fire! We have to get out, now!" He could feel the smoke beginning to sting his eyes and burn his throat.

***

Fraser stepped between Ray and Dot before any more ugly words could be uttered. "Ms. Dottweiler, Ray, this is not productive. I think we have established that to our knowledge, no one here was involved in leaking any confidential information. The best we can do is talk to the reporter and see if we can get him to reveal his sources."

Dot laughed, a harsh, mocking sound. "Constable, journalists tend not to reveal their sources unless there's a court order involved."

"Then perhaps we should consider--" He broke off and sniffed the air in alarm.

Dot and Ray did the same. "Burnt...toast?" suggested Ray, looking toward the back of the craft truck.

Fraser shook his head, sniffed again, and then it clicked. "The makeup trailer." He was eight feet away by the time the newspaper he'd dropped hit the ground.

"Oh, God," Dot gasped, "oh, God!"

Ray tossed his phone at her. "Call it in! Call it in!" he barked, before taking off after Fraser.

Dot dialed as she, too, ran for all she was worth.

***

Daga planted her feet like a stubborn mule and snatched her wrist away from Tony's grasp. "Not without my pictures!" she cried. "I just grab them, it only takes a second..." She started pulling down Wladyslaw and his kin from the right side of the mirror, coughing, squinting through the smoke, the left side of her face lit by the advancing flames.

Tony spared another nervous look at the fire. It was generating thick black smoke, and the flames were closing in on the ceiling and the near corner of the trailer. He'd had a small part in a movie about firefighters a few years back, and his blood ran cold as he recalled the lectures they'd been given by the expert consultants. They'd talked a lot about flashover, the scary moment when a fire went from growing to fully developed, burning all available fuel within a compartmentalized area. The trailer was not all that big. If they didn't get out before the ceiling caught...

"Daga, no! Get out! Come on!" He grabbed her upper arm and dragged her away from her mirror, ignoring her feeble protests, knowing every second counted. He was barely able to see. The far wall wavered in his vision. His head was starting to swim, and he felt dizzy and lightheaded. The smoke will kill us long before the flames will, he thought frantically, and then he remembered that air closer to the ground was usually less noxious. He dropped to his hands and knees, his mind racing. What do I do? What do I do? He panted for air, panic threatening to rip a scream from his throat.

There. The silver door at the other end of trailer winked in the light of the flames like a beacon, cutting through the smoke that was now so thick and dark it seemed palpable. Now if he could just get over there without passing out! Crawling on all fours, he began to drag Daga to the far door. His eyes stung fiercely, like a dozen paper cuts at once, and teared until he was blinking a constant stream out of his eyes. He felt like he was breathing through a straw. Where the hell was the silver door? Maybe he had only imagined it.

The heat was rapidly growing unbearable. He was a dying man trying to crawl across the desert to the shimmering oasis. His vision narrowed until he was looking through a tunnel, the rest consumed by the fire. His heart pounded wildly in his ears. Daga suddenly seemed to be made of solid gold, she was so heavy. He felt strangely disconnected from the flesh and muscle of his body, as if he were guiding a remote-control robot rather than his own arms and legs. He was just aware enough to realize they weren't going to make it out. He and Daga were going to die inside a makeup trailer. Christ, what a way to go. If only I had quit smoking, he thought ruefully, his free hand flopping to the right as he crashed to the floor.

His hand hit something smooth and hard and cool. The door. He was there! But it was so comfortable here on the floor, he just needed a minute to rest... Stand up, you idiot, he told himself sternly. Get up! Now! This is your only chance to live!

Summoning his strength for one last effort, he wobbled unsteadily to his feet. He saw stars; it would be a matter of seconds before he blacked out, and he wasn't going to be able to get up a second time. Daga leaned on his left hip, apparently dazed but conscious. The fire was now roaring audibly in his ears, hissing and popping in some sibilant demonic language of death and destruction. He used both her weight and his to lean on the bar stretching across the door.

It opened, and the cool air embraced them like a benediction. Unable to right themselves, they both tumbled onto the landing and down the two steps to the ground. Flat on his back, Tony coughed and gratefully sucked in a lungful of downtown Chicago air, then another, and nothing in his life had ever tasted so fresh and pure. The cloudless blue sky above him, stars slowly winking out as the sun prepared to make its grand entrance, gradually took on a crisper outline. He heard Daga alternately coughing and crying a few feet away.

His head began to clear. They had not died in a makeup trailer. They were alive! Alive, alive, alive! Then it occurred to Tony that six feet away from the door was probably not the best place to be, especially with all the cosmetics and aerosol cans still inside. He got up as quickly as he could, helped Daga to her feet, and moved her into the center aisle, away from the burning trailer. "Daga. Daga. Daga! Look at me. Are you all right?" He was not a particularly tall man, but he towered over her. Gently, he lifted her chin and looked down into her sooty, tear-streaked face. She was crying and mumbling brokenly, one hand clutching his shirt, the other a half-dozen photos. He couldn't make anything out except the music of the sirens in the distance. "Listen, the fire engines are coming. Sssh, Daga, we're all right, and that's the important thing."

Movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see Fraser and Vecchio barreling toward them, followed by Dot. He nodded that they were unharmed, more or less, and saw profound relief wash across their faces before looking back down at poor Daga, who didn't deserve any of this.

"Nie, nie, no, I'm not all right," she sobbed. "My family...I only save a few of them." She looked down at the pictures in her hand and cried even harder. At a loss, Tony wrapped his arms around the old woman and held her close, trying to spare her the view of the fire. He stroked the top of her head and watched with a feeling of utter helplessness as the trailer burned, the orange, flickering light casting hideous shadows on his half-finished scar.

***

Don Stillwell was clearly in a melodramatic mood. "How could this happen? How could our star come this close to being burned to a crisp?" he bellowed.

"And Canada's best makeup artist," Tony added, shifting uncomfortably. An hour after the fire, he was showered and in costume, sipping a mug of hot tea as he tried to wrap his mind around what had happened. He had suffered only a few minor, easily camouflaged bruises in his tumble out of the trailer. He looked like his usually dapper self on the outside, but he was still shivering inside at his narrow escape. The first thing he had done was call his family back in Toronto to let them know he was all right, before they heard about it through the grapevine or on the news.

The chic interview couch was not really made for extended sitting, and Tony's back was already beginning to complain, but the interview room was the best available place for an impromptu meeting. Stillwell, Dot, Tom Daigle, the fire investigator, Genevieve, and Fraser and Vecchio, along with Dief, arranged themselves as best they could on the couch, the matching armchairs, or the carpet to form a rough circle. Daga had been taken to the hospital as a precaution, but would likely be released by mid-day. How could Stillwell forget about her? Precaution or no, she was the one in the hospital, damn it!

Stillwell still wasn't satisfied. "What about the sprinkler system? Wasn't there a fire extinguisher, at least?"

Dot paged through some notes. "The trailer was old enough that it wasn't required to be equipped with a sprinkler system. There was a working fire extinguisher...it passed inspection three months ago. Unfortunately, it was at the opposite end of the trailer from where the fire started, so there was really no opportunity to use it." She passed a few pages over to Lt. Daigle, a gray-haired but still robust man in his 50's.

"Thank you," said Daigle, glancing through the forms and checklists. "From what Mr. Klein says, it sounds like there was a simple short circuit in the outlet. Faulty wiring causes a lot of fires like this."

"Sir," Fraser chimed in, "is there any evidence that the outlet or microwave was tampered with?"

"Slow down, son. The site's not even cold yet, and you want me to traipse through there and tell you that? I need to fill out some paperwork on this, talk to a few folks...it'll be this afternoon at the earliest before I can tell you anything useful." He got to his feet. "I'm sorry about all the ruckus, but I think most people would rather replace one trailer than hold two funerals. Thank you for your help. If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to the office and start working on this." He gathered his things and left.

"Ruckus is right," sighed Dot. "Channel 12 and Channel 6 both had their traffic copters over the fire, sending live shots of our burning makeup trailer to every house in Chicagoland. Channel 8 has already asked to send a team down to cover the fire for the noon news. And now they're all going to ask me about the death threats while they're here. Maybe I should just resign now."

"Maybe you should," said Genevieve tartly, looking at her watch. "We were supposed to start our first scene twenty minutes ago. It's all day scenes today, so we need every minute of sunlight if we want to stay on schedule. We can do a quick rewrite to get by without Tony's scar today, but the show must go on," she reminded everyone, rising from an armchair and brushing the lint off her clothes. "Chop chop!"

"Uh, excuse me, Genevieve, but before you go, aren't we forgettin' something kind of important?" Ray said.

"I don't think so, and it's Ms. King to you, Detective," she replied coolly, as if she were talking to an eight year-old.

Ray swallowed his anger with difficulty. "Your star, Ms. King. We need to tighten things up around this place to keep him safe."

"Really? Who died and made you Security God?"

"Look, lady, I have direct orders from the Chicago Film Office to do everything I can to prevent an international...big mess." Not totally accurate, but close enough. "So listen up. One: no extras wandering around the set. They're supervised at all times. Two: put the fan barricades further back. You've got the crowd so close, someone could take him out with a slingshot. Three: the press bozos go through metal detectors on their way in, and their stuff gets searched. Anyone who doesn't like it doesn't get their story. Any questions?"

To his surprise, Dot had his back. "Those are very solid suggestions, Detective. We'll implement them right away, and thank you for bringing them to our attention." She handed him his phone back, her eyes imploring his forgiveness. "Thank you."

Genevieve sighed dramatically and looked at her watch again. "Fine, whatever. Now we're twenty-two minutes late...let's just get on with this. Tony, fire or no fire, you're not being paid to sit around and mope." She shuffled her clipboards importantly and breezed out the door.

As much as he wanted to smack her, Tony knew Genevieve was right, and offered no argument. He felt like he was eighty years old as he got to his feet and followed her out the door, Dot and Stillwell close behind him.

"Why couldn't our wacko nail her instead?" Ray murmured to Fraser as they brought up the rear.

***

Emerging from the small building, Fraser and Ray nearly collided with Margaret Thatcher.

"Inspector Thatcher," Fraser greeted her with surprise, "good morning, Sir."

"Constable Fraser, Detective Vecchio," she nodded briefly to each of them, smoothing the skirt of her tailored business suit. "I saw the news report and wanted to make sure that everything...was secure." She looked Fraser up and down, a slight frown on her face. "You don't even smell like smoke."

"Yeah, he was Febrezed at birth," volunteered Ray.

But Fraser knew he was guilty as charged, and he looked down at his boots in shame. "Yes, Ma'am...I'm afraid we didn't arrive on the scene until after Mr. Klein and his makeup artist had already extricated themselves from the structure. We were...otherwise occupied at the moment of crisis." He slowly lifted his eyes, expecting the Inspector to fix him with a disappointed glare, but she just looked confused.

"Constable, I saw you on television. Your face was sooty, you had a gash on your right cheek, and you were comforting an elderly woman, whom I assumed you had saved from the inferno. Are you telling me I'm blind?"

"No, sir. It seems that Tony Klein and I look remarkably similar. It was Mr. Klein whom you saw, but he was uninjured. The makeup artist was applying the gash when the fire broke out."

"Ah." She considered this for a moment. "Well, that's not why I'm here. The voice analysis is in." She pulled a folder out of her bag and handed it to Fraser.

"No match," he read, disappointed.

"That's right. But I thought that since you've spoken with many of the crew members since the calls came in, you might recognize the voice now, so I brought a copy of the tape. It's been re-mixed for the best possible clarity."

"Good thinking, sir."

"Just tell me you recognize the voice." She pulled a small tape recorder out of her jacket pocket and pressed the play button. Fraser and Ray leaned in to listen. Ray closed his eyes and tried to relax, letting the voice wash over him.

"Nope," Ray said, "whoever that guy is, I haven't talked to him."

"Nor have I, I'm afraid," said Fraser.

"But," Ray added, "I'd bet everything I own he's a hometown boy, born and raised right here."

"That's some help, at least," admitted Thatcher. "Listen to it again and see if you can tell me anything else." She rewound the cassette to the beginning and played it once more.

The first call, a message left on the Consulate answering machine, was brief and to the point. "Tony Klein is dead," the voice said menacingly, and hung up. After a slight pause, the second call began to play: "Good morning, bon jour, Canadian Consulate, Consulat du Canada, Temporary Assistant Interim Associate Deputy Liaison Officer Renfield Turnbull speaking, Provisoire...uh, sorry, I don't know what my title is in French, pardon, je ne sais pas ce qui-"

"Shut up and listen to me, you twit!" the caller yelled in frustration.

"I beg your pardon," replied a hurt Turnbull, "but I was just trying-"

"Shut up! Do I have put to put a padlock on your big fat mouth? Now listen..."

"What was that?" said Fraser.

Thatcher stopped the tape. "What?"

"There's something in the background there. Could you play that section again?"

She briefly rewound the tape and turned the volume up. "...PUT A PADLOCK ON YOUR BIG FAT MOUTH? NOW LISTEN..." There was something tinny in the background at the end of the question and at the beginning of the following sentence.

"Trash cans clattering? Someone emptying a dumpster?" mused Thatcher. She rewound the tape and played it again.

"A clock!" exclaimed Ray. "Big one, too. It's chiming, uh..."

"Quarter past the hour," supplied Fraser. "But the call was received at ten-eighteen."

Thatcher nodded. "The clock must have been three minutes slow."

"Hey, wait a minute," Ray interrupted, "why didn't Turnbull tell me about this if he was the one who took the call? And how do you know your clock wasn't three minutes fast?"

"We had to get clearance from Ottawa before we could share that information with anyone outside the Consulate," Thatcher rejoined frostily. "And we have three radio-controlled clocks that automatically synchronize themselves with the National Clock in Ottawa every morning at 3 a.m. We communicate with people in five time zones on a regular basis, so it's important to know what time it is."

"Sure, but down to the nanosecond? Is being anal a requirement to get into Mountie school?" Ray found this thought highly amusing.

"Laugh all you like, Detective, but unless your forensics squad gets our man's fingerprints from that note, this is the only concrete lead we have."

"So we're looking for a public clock that chimes Big-Ben style and is three minutes slow? What are we going to do, drive around the city with our windows down until we hear it and go, 'Ah-ha! That's the one!' and then seize the cell phones from every house within earshot?"

"It is a nice day today," Fraser said. "Finding the clock would at least help us pinpoint the suspect's location."

Ray shrugged. "I guess it beats watching the robots recite their lines five hundred times. OK, let's rock and roll."

"Wait." Thatcher produced the smallest of the Consulate's three radio-controlled clocks, a small desktop model, from her bag and handed it to Fraser along with the tape recorder. "Good luck, Constable. After the latest incident, we really shouldn't leave Mr. Klein to his own devices. I'll keep a close eye on him until you get back."

"I bet you will," Ray muttered.

"What?"

"I said, 'It's such a thrill.' Watching a real movie being shot, I mean."

"Mmm." Thatcher didn't believe him for an instant, but let it pass. "I'll call if there are any developments here. Hopefully, Turnbull will manage not to burn down the Consulate in our absence. He said that if our would-be murderer called again, he'd be sure to take down a number where he could be reached." The last elicited an exasperated eye roll from the normally composed Inspector.

"Very good, sir. We'll let you know if we find anything."

"Yeah, like Turnbull's brain," snickered Ray.

***

[If you like, you can play Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell" on your mental jukebox over this montage...] Ray might have been better off with the robots. He and Fraser crisscrossed the city all the way up to Evanston and went west, out to Park Ridge, before turning south and heading toward Cicero, keeping their eyes peeled for large public clocks. They seemed to be everywhere: on churches, libraries, city administration buildings, and at the university campuses they crawled past. Every one required finding out whether it chimed, and how, and for the few that seemed promising from pedestrians' descriptions, they had to wait until the next quarter hour and listen to it.

They'd heard five Big Ben clocks so far today, and only one of them sounded close to the recording, but it was two minutes fast, not three minutes slow. Frannie had tried to help as best she could by providing some addresses gleaned from the phone book, but she kept giving them Oak Park when they were in Skokie, and vice versa. Despite growing up in Chicago, she had a notoriously poor sense of direction. She'd once gone to visit an old school friend at her new apartment in Naperville and ended up in Milwaukee.

Ray checked the gas gauge and sneezed for the twelfth time in the last hour.

"Bless you, Ray." Fraser reflexively extended a tissue so his partner wouldn't have to take his eyes off the road.

"Thanks. This ragweed is killin' me." The windows on the car had been down all day, of course, the better to listen with, and it was beginning to take its toll on him. "Hey, we're going to need some gas soon." His stomach growled noisily. "And some lunch wouldn't be bad, either." He turned his head toward the back seat for a moment. "You hungry, Dief?" he asked the warm amber eyes. Dief's head popped up eagerly, but when no food was immediately forthcoming, he lay down again with a long-suffering sigh.

"Now would be a good time to refuel, while we're still in the suburbs. As you know, there aren't many stations inside the city limits. I wonder why that is?" Fraser pondered.

"Who cares? There's a Shell station, that'll do." Ray swung the car around expertly and began fueling. He moved the metal tab into place to secure the pump handle, then leaned his arms on the driver's side window.

"You ever want to be an actor, Fraser?"

His partner considered the question for a moment. "Since I was home-taught, I was never in any school plays--of course, they were restricted to pieces with fewer than ten parts anyway. There was the Nativity play at church at Christmas. I was a bit on the retiring side, and...different from the other children, so I didn't enjoy that much. I usually tried for a bit part or handled the costumes. One year I was a camel." He smiled ruefully at the memory.

Ray swatted at an errant yellow jacket, shooing it away. "I guess that's a 'no,' then."

"Yes, I suppose so. But every so often they'd have Film Night at the Greater Tuktoyaktuk Community Centre, showing wonderful old classics like The Wizard of Oz, or Casablanca, or a Doris Day movie, and I was..." He cast about for a word, a faraway look in his eyes. "Transported. It all seemed so exotic, and magical, and so completely unlike how we lived. I always thought of America as a place where everyone was terribly witty and loved to burst into song for no particular reason."

Ray chuckled appreciatively and wanted to reply, but was suddenly busy shooing away several more buzzing insects. "These things make me crazy...there's always a ton of 'em this time of year. Do you have yellow jackets in the Northwest Territory?"

"Territories," he corrected automatically, "and no, we just have poisonous tundra beetles, polar bears...Ray, I suggest you move away from the garbage can behind you..."

Ray realized his swatting was only angering the insects, and moved back to take the nozzle out of the now-full gas tank. "Receipt..." he reminded himself, turning to the touchpad above the pump.

"They won't reimburse without a receipt any more," Ray explained as he jumped back in the car, careful to roll up the windows so that the yellow jackets were on the outside.

"What about you, Ray, did you ever want to be an actor?"

"With a name like Stanley Kowalski? Every year on the first day of school, the teacher would call it out off the list, and the whole class would laugh at me. I'd tell her I go by Ray, but the kids would tease me about it 'til Christmas. They'd come up to me and yell, 'Steeelllla!! Steeeellllla!'" Ray broke into a grin, and his voice softened. "I think it helped me win Stella. I'd tell her all the time that it was fate, that she was meant to become Stella Kowalski..." The grin vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. "Well, we see how that worked out." He gunned the car out of the parking lot. "Let's drop by the station and light a fire under Forensics. They should have something by now." His appetite had vanished.

***

The file folder whizzed across the bullpen like a manila Frisbee, narrowly missing Jack and his partner Dewey, who had to bend back to avoid being clipped in the nose.

"Hey!" Dewey protested. "I said I was sorry about that thing I said!" Jack said something to Dewey in a low voice, retrieved the folder, and brought it back to the desk from which it had been so violently flung. Ray looked even worse than usual: his eyes were drawn and puffy, his skin looked blotchy, and neither he nor his clothes were April fresh. He had the look of a man who'd been on stakeout for too long.

"Ray, what's eating you?" Jack asked, a note of actual concern in his voice.

Ray accepted the folder with a sigh. "Forensics couldn't ID the perp from the note...the film crew, you remember." Jack nodded. "They're sending some little fibers and hair particles and stuff for DNA testing, but none of that's any good unless we have someone to match it with." He banged his fist on the desk, making the phone and desk lamp jump in apology. "Unusable prints! No voice match! It's like this guy doesn't exist!"

"That bites, all right," Jack agreed. "I guess you'll just have to keep digging." He really didn't know what else to say, and moved off to rejoin Dewey, who was waiting at the door.

"And I swore I'd already come up in China," Ray tried to joke, but it fell flat.

Fraser carefully opened the bullpen doors with his back and struck a course for Ray's desk, a cup of coffee in each hand. Then he saw Ray's sour expression and stopped short. "The prints were unusable." It was a statement, not a question.

Ray nodded. "The crew prints were perfect. Only the last set belonging to Mr. Bad Guy was unusable." He gratefully accepted a cup from Fraser and took a long swig, not tasting the coffee at all. "What now?"

Fraser sipped his own coffee as he considered their options. "Perhaps we could schedule an appointment with the reporter who wrote the story about the death threats. Although he is not legally required to divulge his sources, if he knew how important it would be to our investigation, perhaps..."

"He'd help us? Maybe. I don't know the guy. But, since we have no leads anyway," Ray said, with a dirty look at the Forensics file, "we might as well give it a shot." He picked up the phone, then put it back down again. "Maybe you should talk to him. You could sell ice to an Eskimo."

"Inuit, but thank you," Fraser corrected reflexively, picking up the receiver and dialing a number.

"You remember that guy's number from seeing it at the bottom of the article for two seconds before running off to a fire scene?"

"I'm afraid so," Fraser replied with a hint of a smile. Ray heard someone answer the phone on the other end and listened in amazement as Fraser proceeded to wheedle his way into an appointment, writing a few notes on a pad as he spoke.

"Mr. Kent will see us in an hour," Fraser noted with satisfaction as he hung up. "That gives us plenty of time to have lunch first."

"Great idea." Ray realized he was ravenous.

***

Clark Kent was surprisingly young, perhaps only in his mid 20's, and wore heavy black glasses to frame his wavy dark hair and blue eyes. Fraser and Ray watched Kent's face intently as the tape drew to a close. Kent himself looked down at the floor, equally intent on hearing the threat-maker's voice. "Does that sound like the same man who called you yesterday?" Fraser asked, hitting the "Stop" button.

"It sure sounds like him. I can't be a hundred percent sure, but I'd say yes, it's him. So who is this guy?"

Ray and Fraser exchanged a disappointed look. "We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on the matter," Fraser replied evenly. "He didn't provide you with his name, or a way to contact him?"

"I asked him, but like a lot of people who call in with tips, he didn't want to identify himself. Nothing unusual about that, really. So the tip panned out and I published the story. That's all I know."

Fraser frowned slightly. "Mr. Kent, it is standard practice to have at least two sources for each piece of information included in a story. Who was your second source?"

"Just someone on the set. I don't have to give that person's name to you without a court order, and I'm not going to." Kent sat back, petulantly crossing his arms and waiting for a reaction.

But then a clock chimed into the tense silence, and two heads swiveled as one toward the wall of windows.

"That sounds like our clock," said Ray.

"It certainly does," Fraser agreed, pulling the small clock Thatcher had given him out of his pocket. "And it's three minutes slow." They both gravitated to the windows, looking up and down the street at the surrounding buildings.

Kent seemed disappointed that he couldn't get a rise out of the pair. "Gentlemen, I really need to get back to work. If you insist on gaping at the clock across the street, please do it from somewhere else."

But now the duo had their backs to Kent and barely heard what he said. "Incredible," fumed Ray. "Right downtown, and we missed it. OK, I'll have Frannie get me a list of all the apartment buildings in this area, maybe coffee shops and restaurants..."

"Wait, Ray." Fraser pointed at the building on the far corner of the block. "Look."

Ray looked as he hit the speed dial. "Yeah, it's a hotel. So what?"

"That's not just any hotel, Ray, it's the hotel where the crew is staying this week." He looked apologetically at his partner, who was still holding his phone to his ear.

"District 27," a familiar female voice floated out of the earpiece.

Two and two came together, and Ray's hand fell back to his waist like a deflating balloon. "The crew hotel. So they're all suspects again. Why are all our leads dead ends, Fraser? Why? Can you tell me that?"

"Nikki, is that you?" the voice in the phone asked with considerable annoyance. "Nikki, this isn't funny..."

Ray slammed the phone shut.

"I wish I could," Fraser answered. He then turned to the reporter still fuming at his desk. "Thank you kindly. We'll show ourselves out," he said with a polite tip of his hat as he and Ray beat a hasty retreat from Kent's office.

Ray and Fraser entered the elevator, and Ray leaned the back of his head against the elevator wall.

"They're not all dead ends, you know," Fraser tried to cheer Ray up. "The fact that the threat-maker and the newspaper source are likely one and the same man lends credence to your theory that Ms. Dottweiler may be directing the incidents as some kind of publicity stunt."

Ray straightened. "Yeah, right. And the way she was so eager-beaver to pin the newspaper thing on us...I think I'd better have another little talk with her." Ray's phone suddenly rang shrilly in the confined space.

The elevator dinged, and the pair exited as Ray answered, "Vecchio."

"Ray?" It was Frannie. "We've been trying to call you."

Ray stopped walking, not liking the tone of her voice. "What's wrong?"

"Tony Klein's in an ambulance. He's in animal-plastic shock."

"Animal...what?"

"From a bee sting. He's big-time allergic. They're taking him to Chicago General."

"We're on our way." Without further ado, Ray hung up and turned back to Fraser. "Actor Boy's in trouble. Chicago General kinda trouble."

***

Inspector Thatcher stood alone in the hallway outside the ER area, still in the business suit she had been wearing that morning, fidgeting and pale with worry.

Fraser reached her first. "Inspector Thatcher. What happened?"

She wanted to sink through the floor in shame. "I failed," she snapped, "that's what happened."

"Yeah, obviously," Ray growled, with a glance at the forbidding double doors marked "Medical Personnel Only Beyond This Point."

She stiffened and puffed up, as if to yell back at him, but then she turned away and slumped onto a bench set against the wall. "Detective, this isn't just some unsolved case we're talking about here." The fight had gone out of her voice. "That man has a wife and children. If he dies..." She leaned her head on the back of the bench, unwilling to complete the thought aloud. Her eyes were unnaturally bright.

Fraser sat down next to her on the bench, careful to maintain a reasonable distance. "I'm sure it's not your fault, sir," he offered. "Ray was just remarking today about the abundance of yellow jackets this year."

Even Ray softened, realizing he and Thatcher were being tortured by the same demons of guilt and perceived incompetence. "Just tell us what happened," he urged, coming over to stand beside them. "Maybe we can put some pieces together."

Thatcher slowly pulled her neck back to a normal position, glad to have something to do to distract her from the inner voice screaming accusations. "The crew was filming a gun battle outside some bank for a while. Quite a while, actually. There were long breaks between the shots, but I made sure to keep my eye on our target. He went back to his trailer once or twice, and he did two interviews, but things were going very smoothly, or so I thought."

She had a bitter, acrid taste in her mouth, and had to push herself to continue. "It started to cloud over, and the wind picked up a bit. He walked over to where he'd left his leather jacket, over the back of someone's chair, and put it on. Then he cried out and grabbed his hand, like he'd been burned. I ran over and he said, 'I've been stung, I'm allergic.' He had his Epi-Pen in the other pocket, so he pulled it out and injected himself in the thigh. But then he realized that someone deliberately emptied it...there was only carrier liquid and no medication left in the syringe."

Her voice had gone flat and dead, her eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance, as if she were watching it all happen again from some faraway spot beyond her reach. "He became very frightened and started having trouble breathing, so I had...someone...call an ambulance." She knew there had been other people all around, but she hadn't really seen any of them through the fog of crisis.

"He literally swelled up before my eyes. He was staring at me, clutching his chest and wheezing, silently begging me to help him, and then he went into convulsions and stopped breathing. I gave him mouth-to-mouth until the paramedics took over." She'd never forget the look of abject desperation in his eyes just before he passed out.

The two men fell silent for a long moment, not knowing how to respond to Meg's raw pain. "Sir...I have your clock," Fraser finally said, drawing it out of his pocket and offering it to her.

She accepted it grimly. "Did it help?"

"We did find the clock heard on the recording, but it was in a densely populated area downtown that included the crew hotel."

"So it didn't really help at all, then."

Fraser's tone was heavy with regret. "That would be more or less correct, sir. On the other hand," he added, brightening slightly, "the reporter who wrote today's newspaper story about Tony Klein confirmed that the person who called him to leak the information about the death threats, and the man who issued those threats to the Consulate, are one and the same."

Meg thought this over for a moment before a commotion arose at the other end of the hallway. Dot, Stillwell, and Genevieve were hurrying toward them, bickering among themselves about wrong turns and one-way streets. It was Inspector Thatcher, not Meg, who stood to meet them, all traces of vulnerability hidden once more.

Stillwell addressed her first, rapid-fire. "How is he? Is he all right? Can we see him?"

"They took him into the ER about twenty minutes ago. I was told to wait here, and that someone would be sent to update me on his condition. That person has not yet appeared."

"God, I hope he's OK," Dot sighed. "First the trailer fire this morning, and now this..." She wiped her nose with a tissue, her eyes red.

"This production's cursed, if you ask me." Genevieve shook her head. "We've only got three scenes left to shoot. Maybe we should just call it off before someone gets killed."

"The doctors know what they're doing," said Thatcher with more confidence than she actually felt. "As for the investigation, the Chicago Police Department has already secured the scene and collected evidence, including the insect that stung Mr. Klein, and someone will be over to provide a preliminary report and take statements shortly." The tense minutes after her arrival, when she'd been pacing outside the main entrance all alone, frantic with worry and guilt, had given her the opportunity to organize a response. Her cell phone battery was a mere shadow of its former self.

Everyone jumped to the side as the double doors opened and a nurse in scrubs emerged. She sized up the group before deciding that the well-dressed brunette was in charge. "Are you the one who asked about Tony Klein?"

Thatcher nodded, feeling her heart thudding in her chest.

The nurse's eyes darted to Stillwell, who was dialing a number on his cell phone. "You need to turn that off immediately. No cell phones in the hospital. Are you a relative, sir?"

"Hell, yes. I'm his director! The whole damn picture's riding on his bedroom eyes!"

Thatcher's hands and feet felt like icicles. If the nurse was insisting on speaking to a relative..."His family's in Toronto," she replied woodenly, ignoring Stillwell's outburst.

Ray gave Fraser a shove forward. "Except for his twin brother here."

"Identical, not fraternal, I'm guessing," commented the nurse brightly. "Right this way," she said to Fraser, taking his arm and leading him toward the double doors.

Fraser looked back at Ray with surprised indignation and opened his mouth to explain his true identity, but the looks from the assembled group, especially Meg, all pleaded with him to keep quiet...so reluctantly, he did. This was a lie of the first order, but at least he would be able to find out more details about Tony's condition.

Now the doors had closed behind him. He'd have to keep up the charade.

"So how is...uh...he? Can I see him?"

"It's lucky you got him in here when you did," the nurse confided. "Another five minutes, and it would have been very dicey. Anaphylactic shock can be nasty."

"Ah. I'm guessing you employed standard epinephrine therapy? One intramuscular shot of 0.01 cc's per kilogram, to be followed by a second shot if there is insufficient respiratory recovery and/or resolution of urticaria..."

"...within ten minutes," finished the nurse. "How'd you know that? Oh, yeah, I guess you've gone through this with him before."

"No, I haven't," Fraser admitted, but something suddenly clicked in his head at her question. He filed the thought away for later. "He's out of danger, then?"

"Yes. They're transferring him to a room for observation now. He's getting a little oxygen and an IV to re-hydrate him, and his blood pressure will continue to be monitored for a while."

Fraser nodded. That was standard procedure, in case there was a secondary round of shock over the next few hours. It was an enormous relief to know he would be all right, in no small measure because of Meg's assistance.

The nurse walked swiftly through the maze of hallways until they were in another antiseptic hallway on the opposite side of the building. "Wait here," she said, indicating a bench. "Let me go in and make sure he's settled, and then you can see him." She disappeared into a room across the hall.

Fraser obediently took a seat, wishing he had some way to share the good news with the others. He understood Meg's feeling of having failed in her duty. He'd felt exactly the same way this morning. Of course, a shower had been enough to alleviate the problem this morning...

The door opened, and the nurse came over to him. "You can go in now. I understand a police officer will be in soon to take his statement, so you might want to make it a quick visit. Have you contacted your family?"

"Not yet. I'd prefer to tell them that it's all over with and he's fine." That was certainly the truth!

The nurse nodded in understanding and strode away down the corridor to her next patient.

For someone who had been five minutes away from dying, Tony Klein looked surprisingly good. He was wan and obviously tired, but the hives were barely noticeable, and he looked up alertly as Fraser entered the room. The oxygen tubes in his nose and the IV in the back of his hand were the only reminders of his recent brush with death.

"Tony," Fraser forced himself to use the man's first name as a twin brother would do, "are you all right?"

Tony did his best to smile. "Yeah, I'm OK. Just a little light-headed. I had to use these things," he motioned to the tubes in his nose, "for a TV show once, but I don't remember them being this uncomfortable. How'd you get in here?"

Fraser blushed and looked away. "Detective Vecchio falsely presented me as your twin brother, and I went along with the ruse."

Tony smiled again, more genuinely this time, at Fraser's reaction. "Don't worry about it. Thanks for coming to check up on me. And please thank that other lady, the one who helped me..."

"Inspector Thatcher."

"Yes, Inspector Thatcher. They told me she did mouth-to-mouth until the paramedics got there. She probably saved my life."

"I'll be sure to tell her, but she will probably say it was merely her duty." Fraser offered a small smile of his own and took a seat in the chair nearest the bed. "She said you were stung when you put on your jacket, is that right?"

Tony nodded. "The bee stung me, I pulled my hand out of the pocket, and sure enough, there it was. I shook my hand and saw it fall on the ground."

Fraser frowned. "Was there anything sweet in your pocket, like a candy bar or a piece of fruit? Or perhaps you'd spilled some soda on it earlier today?"

"No. That pocket was empty. I was surprised the bee was in there, to say the least."

Fraser glanced around and zeroed in on a bag of Tony's clothes on a table on the other side of the bed. "Is the jacket you were wearing in there? Mind if I have a look?"

"Sure, go ahead."

Fraser extracted the jacket, an exquisitely tailored medium-weight black jacket in top-quality leather, from the bag and scrutinized the pockets. The openings were covered by heavy double-stitched leather flaps. Fraser pulled a flap up and let it fall, watching carefully, and repeated the process several times.

"These flaps...I don't think a bee could have easily wandered inside." He turned the pocket inside out, continuing his examination. The lining was a sturdy, quality cotton/silk blend. It was clean, with no noticeable stains on it. "No holes in the lining, either," he noted. He put his nose into the cool cloth and took a deep whiff, failing to note Tony's widening eyes. "There's a strong residual scent of tobacco, of course, but there's something else, rather faint, that might be more recent..." He quickly ran his tongue across the spot that seemed to be holding the smell.

The expression on Tony's face was somewhere between fascinated and appalled. "Eww. Do you mind? That's my favorite coat."

Fraser looked up, still paging through a mental catalogue to identify that faint taste. "Sorry," he said absently. "There is something there...a faint combination of...plastic and chocolate pudding. How odd. Have you put a container of chocolate pudding in that pocket recently?"

Tony was still giving him a strange look. "Uh, no, not ever, as far as I know. Plastic and chocolate pudding? What does that mean?" He liked the Mountie, but this was getting a little weird.

"I'm not sure." He glanced into the left pocket and saw the EpiPen, but decided not to touch it, since he could be destroying evidence. He frowned as he remembered Meg's account of the events. "Inspector Thatcher said someone may have tampered with your EpiPen."

Tony nodded again. "There's a gray cap that you pull off when you're about to use it, and that cap was missing. There was still some liquid in the syringe, so I went ahead and stuck myself with it, but I guess the epinephrine was already gone. The instructions say something about there being a lot of liquid left over after you give yourself a shot, but it won't do you any good. It's a single-use device."

"You seem to be very familiar with it. Have you experienced anaphylactic shock before?"

"Yeah, but not like this," said Tony ruefully, gesturing at the room around him. "I had my first bad reaction two years ago. Not quite like this one, but bad enough that I went right to a doctor and had to take it easy for a couple hours until I felt better. He prescribed the pen and made sure I knew how to use it. I was on a movie set then, too."

"Oh, really? What movie?"

"It was called New Moon Rising, and we were shooting out in California. My first big-budget American movie." He rolled his eyes. "What a disaster. If that's what Hollywood is like, I'm staying in Toronto."

"I'm afraid I didn't get to see it," Fraser noted politely. He had, in fact, never even heard of Tony Klein before this week, but that didn't need to be said.

"Don't apologize," rejoined Tony with a self-deprecating smirk, "it wasn't a very good movie."

"Was the current cast and crew aware of your allergy to bee stings?"

"Hell, no. I like being employed."

The door opened, and Ray stuck his head in. "Hi, Tony. I'm glad you're OK."

"Yeah, me too," the actor joked.

"Fraser, could I see you for a minute?"

"Certainly, Ray. Excuse me," he said to Tony, and went into the surprisingly crowded hallway, where Ray, Inspector Thatcher, Lt. Welsh, and Detectives Huey and Dewey were all milling about.

"What's all this?" Fraser asked.

"First things first," said Ray. "The Fire Inspector guy called. Long story short, he thinks the outlet was tampered with. Sabotage. That's a felony arson charge and possibly attempted murder right there."

"And here's your preliminary incident report on the bee sting," said Jack, holding up a manila folder. "We've got some photos, some statements..."

"Someone needs to give that woman Genevieve an attitude adjustment," Dewey tossed in.

"...and we have the bee that got Tony Klein right here." Jack held up a Ziploc bag, which Fraser took and held under the glare of the nearest fluorescent light.

"Interesting," murmured Fraser. "This is not a yellow jacket. It's an Apis ligustica--an Italian honeybee. They're often used for commercial honey production because they are very tractable. They're also sold at some holistic health stores for use in bee-sting therapy."

Ray recoiled. "Why would anyone deliberately get themselves stung?"

"It eases the pain of arthritis in some people, among other things." Fraser moved over to the bench and carefully dumped the bee onto the seat.

"Hey, be careful with that," warned Dewey uneasily. "It is dead, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, don't worry," said Fraser. "A honeybee always dies once she stings someone." He inspected the bee's legs. "No pollen on here. Hmm." Then, to the horror of everyone assembled, he leaned in as close as he could without touching the bee and took a careful sniff.

The group all groaned in some variation of disbelief and disgust.

"Plastic and chocolate pudding," he confirmed, standing up and carefully herding the insect's remains back into the bag with the brim of his Stetson. "This was no accident. This honeybee was meant to be a murder weapon. Ray, as soon as we're outside the hospital, could I borrow your phone for a moment?"

***

It was full dark by the time the Intrepid pulled up in front of the Consulate, the night made darker by the heavy clouds blotting out the moon and stars. Dief was highly annoyed at having to share the back seat with Fraser, but since Tony was now riding shotgun, Dief had little choice in the matter.

Inspector Thatcher pulled up behind them in her own car, set the hazard lights, and hurried up to escort Tony inside the building, Dief close behind them.

"I'm still not sure this is a good idea," Ray said to Fraser as they grabbed two duffle bags out of the trunk. "Our guy's called here. Twice. He knows exactly where the Consulate is." He slammed the trunk shut a little more firmly than necessary.

"We've been over this, Ray. Lt. Welsh couldn't help because of budget cuts, and Inspector Thatcher would have to get approval from Ottawa, but no one can be reached this late in the day. At least this way, no further expenditure will be involved." Fraser opened the front door of the Consulate with his free hand, then held the door open so Ray could enter behind him.

"Thanks. Oh...speaking of expenditures, next time, don't volunteer me. I was kinda hoping to get some overtime for this until you opened your big mouth." He dropped his bag on the plush carpet in the foyer with a clunk.

"Sorry, Ray."

Inspector Thatcher and Tony came back downstairs. Thatcher was actually smiling. "I think it's only appropriate that our esteemed guest stay in the Regal Suite. Turnbull's just putting on the finishing touches."

"That's very thoughtful, sir," Fraser replied, "but it may not be the best choice from a security standpoint, with those large windows along two walls, and only the single exit back downstairs..."

Thatcher's smile faltered, then disappeared. Constable Fraser was incredibly annoying, but he was right, as usual. "Ah. Well...what would you suggest, Constable?"

Ray winced. He knew what was coming.

"My office, sir. Both the front and back doors are easily accessible from that location, and the room itself is...inconspicuous. Should someone break in, it would not be the obvious place to look for Mr. Klein."

"That's puttin' a fine point on it. We'll be stuffed in there like a can of sardines," Ray groaned.

Thatcher smiled again, a nervous, insincere smile this time, but Tony stepped in, clearly uncomfortable at the squabble his presence was causing. "Listen, I'll sleep in the broom closet if it will keep me safe. If Fraser thinks we should be in his office, that's fine with me."

Fraser nodded. "Very good. Right this way." He led Tony down the narrow ground floor hall to his office and flipped the light on.

"You live like this?" Tony blurted out before he could stop himself. The room was even smaller than he had envisioned. File cabinets and file boxes dominated the dcor of the near two walls. An ugly brown radiator in one corner warmed the room. A cot so narrow that it fairly screamed "military issue" was arranged under the window on the opposite wall. Most of the fourth wall to his far right was taken up by a large shelving unit, in front of which Fraser's chair and desk were squeezed. A small portrait of the Queen above the unit and a dingy map of Canada above the radiator were the only decorations in the room. He mentally tried arranging three men, in any constellation, on the floor, and failed to see how they could possibly fit.

"Don't worry," said Fraser hastily, guessing his thoughts, "the cot is yours, of course." He set Tony's duffle down on top of the tightly made bed. "I can move some of those file boxes into the closet..." He mentally calculated. "And I can sleep under the desk, if necessary."

Fraser picked up two file boxes and went to the corner behind the head of the bed to put them in the closet. He opened the door, only to have his father pop out, resplendent in his red serge. Bob Fraser walked up to Tony and stared at him in awe, only inches away from the unsuspecting actor's face.

"Would you look at that, son? He looks just like you! I haven't seen anything like this since...since..." He straightened in surprise and put a hand to his chin. "I've never seen anything quite like this, I suppose."

Why did his father insist on talking to him when there were other people around? He'd even gotten Fraser into trouble with the RCMP psychologist when he'd built that ridiculous cabin of his in this very closet. Fraser sighed and stacked the boxes on the right-hand side, then crossed to get more.

"Here, let me help you," Tony offered, bending down to pick up a stack of his own.

"Helpful lad, too," Bob interjected.

"Oh, no, please, allow me," Fraser insisted, with a quick glare at his dad.

In short order, there was enough space cleared along the wall to allow at least two people to sleep on the floor with more than six inches between them. Fraser retrieved blankets from the closet and laid the nicest of them on the cot for Tony, and when he was sure Tony wasn't looking, he made a firm gesture toward the interior of the closet.

"Oh, so now you're ashamed of me all of a sudden?" Bob protested, but disappeared back into the closet as ordered.

Fraser closed the door firmly and turned back to his guest with a slightly forced smile.

"You must be hungry," he said, thinking of his own stay in the hospital and the appalling food he'd had to force down.

"That too," said Tony, "but I'd kill for a nice hot shower." He removed a change of cloth