I deliberately didn’t tell her Hayley’s last name, because I thought she might recognize it. I hoped that if I kept it low-key, the aunt wouldn’t feel she had to lie to protect Brian.
“Well, now I’m concerned too,” she said, without hesitation. “I haven’t heard from Brian for about a month. In fact I was about to call him and check in. No one’s heard from either of them?”
“Not for the past four days.” Could that be right? Only four days? It felt like weeks.
“Do you suppose they ran away together? I can’t believe Brian would do something like that. It’s completely unlike him.” I’d expected that reaction, but she seemed genuinely concerned, and sincere. “Have you spoken to his friends?” she asked, her tone worried.
Based on what we’d learned so far, he didn’t have any. I wondered how well she knew her nephew. No time like the present to find out. “If you have the names of his friends, I’d be glad to take them down.”
“I…I don’t. He never told me about any friends. Only people he worked with.”
I thought we probably already had those, but I took down the co-workers’ names she could remember anyway.
“Did Brian stay with you after his mother died?”
“Yes. He was only sixteen at the time, so I brought him out here to finish school.”
“But he wound up in L.A.-”
She sighed. “Yes. He said he wanted to be a television writer, like his father. His plan was to save up the money to go to college out there and see if he could break in by getting a job as a production assistant. I told him that it’s a very hard road, with lots of competition, but Brian was determined.”
“Even though…?”
“You know about that,” she said flatly. “I never knew for sure whether that man really did steal Tommy’s script. But Tommy became a complete basket case over it…”
“I’m so sorry, Janice. I can only imagine how awful that must’ve been.”
“It was. It was a terrible thing.” Her voice shook a little. “What killed me was that he was a really terrific writer. In fact, I always thought he was better than me. I kept telling him to get out of Hollywood and write novels. But he wouldn’t listen.” Janice gave a heavy sigh.
“I hope you don’t mind. I’d like your opinion regarding things we’ve heard about Tommy.”
“All right.” But her voice was wary. I’d probably feel the same in her position.
“People who’d worked with him on the show said he complained a lot about other writers lifting his stories and his lines-”
“He wasn’t the paranoid type, if that’s what you mean. If he said it, then I’d bet it was true. Now, I’m not saying he couldn’t have been mistaken at times. But there was probably some truth to it.”
