Peggy Lipton co-stars on "Twin Peaks," yet even she doesn't know who killed Laura Palmer. "I don't know if anyone on the cast knows," she says.Hard to believe, given that someone on the show must have done it. Unless it was the bird. And the bird was killed off two weeks ago. Or maybe it was the dancing dwarf who spoke in reverse.
Leo, who was shot by Hank, is the prime suspect. But viewers won't find out until the series returns in the fall.
"I don't think there is a plot line," says Lipton, asked to explain the disjointed maneuvers of "Twin Peaks." "It's like life. Sometimes it doesn't make sense."
Lipton plays world-weary Norma Jennings, owner of the town's Double R diner, who is torn between her husband, Hank, and "Big Ed."
It's a long way from the smoky-voiced, bell-bottomed Julie Barnes of TV's "The Mod Squad."
You remember that show. Lipton, Michael Cole and Clarence Williams III running down an alley in the program's title sequence. From 1968 to 1973, they played hip, anti-establishment cops.
Lipton's role consisted mostly of looking sullen behind stringy blond hair and misting up every now and then. She faded from view with the show's demise.
After more than a decade of self-imposed exile, Lipton has returned. Her children more than half grown, her marriage to legendary record producer Quincy Jones long over, the actress who was 18 years old when she filmed the Mod Squad pilot is grown up, secure and finally ready to stand on her own.
"When I was doing `Mod Squad,' I was really very insecure," says Lipton. "I really didn't like myself very much."
For more than 10 years after "Mod Squad" left the airwaves, Lipton devoted herself to her husband and her two daughters. "My mother was a career woman who wasn't home enough," she says. "I never wanted my children to have that yearning."
With the exception of 1979's "Return of the Mod Squad," Lipton did not pursue acting again until 1985. She made a couple of forgettable movies, divorced Jones and did a lot of auditions.
But it was not until the actress met David Lynch, the quirky and decidedly different director, that she felt something click.
Lynch and former "Hill Street Blues" writer Mark Frost were about to film the pilot for "Twin Peaks," and somehow Lipton was called to audition.
"I don't even know if David knew who I was," she says. "Mark Frost brought up my name. Someone told me that I read for the part, but I was so nervous I didn't remember."
"While we were shooting, it was like a film within a film," says Lipton. "I'd never seen a crew like that - so quiet, so tuned in to David that they watched his every move.
"There was not a lot of set talk. All these people were quite mysterious."