Curse of the Kissing Cousins

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  She turned around to find Lawrence the star fucker getting up from one of the armchairs scattered around the lobby. “Lawrence?”

  “It is you. What are you doing in the Big Apple? I thought Beantown was your beat.”

  “I bribed the border guard to let me across.”

  He laughed, flashing an expensive set of teeth.

  “How about you? Are you in town for a story?” Tilda asked.

  “Background on a series on the hot Broadway shows,” he said. “You?”

  “A feature on makeup artists,” she said. He’d shown too much interest in her Kissing Cousins story at the funeral for her to want to admit to more. “Are you staying at the Kimberly too?”

  “No, I’m at the Four Seasons. I was supposed to be meeting a friend here for dinner.” He checked his watch. “Unfortunately he’s nearly an hour late, and I can’t get him on his cell, so I think I’ve been stood up.”

  “It sounds like that,” Tilda agreed.

  He hesitated a second. “I suppose you’ve got plans for dinner.”

  “Does trying to decide between room service and takeout pizza count?”

  He laughed again. “I think I could improve on that, if you’re interested.”

  Tilda considered the idea. He was old for her, but not bad on the eyes, and they were in the same line of work. Dinner with him would almost certainly be more entertaining than watching Law & Order reruns. “I’m definitely interested,” she said.

  “Excellent.”

  “Just let me run up to my room and drop off some things.” She started toward the elevator and noticed he was walking along with her. “Don’t you want to wait down here, in case your friend shows up?”

  “Honestly, no. If he does make an appearance, I’ll feel obligated to go out with him, and now that I’ve got a better option . . .”

  “Flatterer,” she said, but added firmly, “You wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.” If his reputation as a star fucker was accurate, her virtue was probably safe with him, because she wouldn’t be worth a notch on his bedpost, but why take chances? Room service might be what he had in mind after all. She glanced at him as he walked away, noting that either he worked out or he’d been gifted with naturally firm thighs. Maybe he wasn’t as old as she’d thought.

  Ten minutes to pull notes and makeup samples out of her pocketbook, brush her hair, and use the facilities, and she was good to go. The face Jasmine and her cohorts had layered on showed no signs of cracking, so she left it alone, other than to add fresh lipstick.

  When she got downstairs, Lawrence was chatting up the concierge. “That was fast,” he said when he saw her. “Most women I know would take twice as long, without nearly so delightful a result.”

  It was one of those half-gallant, half-condescending comments that Tilda was never sure how to answer. Should she thank him for the compliment, chide him for insulting untold numbers of women, or point out that some of those women might have been stalling so they wouldn’t have to spend as much time with him? Since she hadn’t decided how much she liked Lawrence, she settled for, “I’ve always strived to be a fast woman. Did you have a restaurant in mind for dinner?”

  “I was just asking Inez here for a recommendation,” Lawrence said, gesturing to the desk clerk. “There’s a Mexican place around the corner she says is quite good, and I was waiting to see if that suits you before calling for a reservation.”

  “Mexican sounds muy bueno,” Tilda said.

  It turned out the restaurant had no wait list, so they strolled the half block there. The night was warmer than in Boston, but not hot—perfect for a stroll. On the way they played the question game: how were they both enjoying New York, where were they from originally, weren’t New York prices outrageous, and so on. Once at the restaurant, they ordered margaritas to go with the chips and salsa the waiter brought to the table, and moved on to the writer-specific part of the game: how long had they been writing; wasn’t it a crime that writers made so little, though neither one volunteered an actual dollar figure; and weren’t most celebrities spoiled or boring or both. By the time their enchiladas arrived, they were well into sharing horror stories about interview subjects who showed up late or not at all, who’d lied or refused to answer questions, who’d made passes at them, and, worst of all, who’d not given them anything interesting to write about.

  Tilda was surprised by how much she was enjoying herself. One of the problems of being a freelancer was that she had no water cooler or break room to hang around to compare notes with her peers. Mostly she worked via phone, fax, and computer. When she did get face time, like at the Entertain Me! offices, it was with editorial, not other writers. The only time she did meet other writers was when they were covering the same event, and that wasn’t a situation that lent itself to sharing war stories.

  Over flan for dessert, Lawrence said, “The nostalgia bit is an interesting niche. How did you pick it?”

  It wasn’t the first time Tilda had been asked, but it wasn’t a question she could answer easily, so she fell back on her standard reply. “I was on the features staff of the college newspaper. We got a fair number of guest lecturers and speakers, but never the A-list—it was always the up-and-comers and the formerly famous. Nobody else on the staff was interested in the old timers—researching their backgrounds was too much work—so I ended up with them. So when I went looking for work, all my clippings were about baby boomer stars. It just went on from there.”

  “Interesting,” Lawrence said.

  “How about you? How did you get into this line?”

  “I was rich,” he said simply. “Dad was busy making us richer, Mom was into charities, so I went to parties. We were living near LA, and since you can’t have a good LA party without a star or three, I started making connections. I didn’t have anything in mind other than having fun, but when I got out of college, I realized Dad was serious about my coming to work for him. I headed for Europe to hide, but I knew that wouldn’t last. Then one day I met a gossip columnist at a party, and she paid me to slip her a few tidbits. When I read the woman’s columns, I realized she wasn’t doing anything I couldn’t do. So I moved back to LA and told Dad I had my own career plan.”

  “Interesting,” she said, echoing him.

  “It’s a living,” he said. “And, no offense, but I think there’s more money in the big stars than in the old-timers angle.” He picked up his glass and swirled what was left of his margarita. “If you ever want to switch tracks, maybe I could make a few calls, introduce you to some people.”

  “Are you sure you could handle the competition?”

  He smiled expansively. “Not a problem. I’m turning down work now.”

  Tilda wasn’t sure if she believed him, but it wouldn’t have been polite to say so after he’d offered her work. “That’s generous of you, Lawrence, but wouldn’t that kind of work be hard to keep up from Boston?”

  “You mean you want to stay there?” he said.

  “The weather is awful, the traffic worse, and if I hear one more morose discussion of what’s happened to the Red Sox, I’ll probably scream. But it’s home.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, clearly lumping Boston with the countless towns he flew over on his way between LA and New York. “Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be glad to help.”

  The check arrived, and after a bit of polite wrangling, he picked it up. After all, he said he had more work than he could handle, whereas Tilda doubted she could talk Jillian into paying for her margaritas.

  During the walk back to the hotel, they talked about what it was that made some shows classics, some cult favorites, and others forgotten except by the composers of trivia quizzes. As they walked into the lobby, the front desk clerk said, “Ms. Harper? Room 417?”

  Tilda nodded.

  “A messenger dropped something off for you.” The clerk reached under the counter, produced a thick manila envelope, and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” Tilda said, recognizing the
handwriting on the envelope as Sophia’s. It must be the information about The Raven’s Prey she’d promised to dig up.

  Lawrence was now moving his weight from one foot to the other. “So,” he said meaninglessly.

  “This was great,” Tilda said. “I almost never get to talk shop.”

  “Me too. Shall I walk you to your room? Maybe we can order nightcaps from room service?”

  “Just a drink?” Tilda said.

  “Absolutely.”

  She didn’t believe him for a minute, and since she’d fully expected him to make the attempt, she’d spent the odd moment during dinner deciding what her response would be. On the plus side were his definite charm and good looks, despite the age difference. On the minus side was his reputation—experience was appealing, but not that much experience. Then there were his offers of work and help in making contacts, both of which could have been construed as ways to get a lot more than a drink. Adding all of that together led her to say, “I don’t think so.”

  “Just a drink, a chance to talk more.” Then he added, “I’ve got no plans to get you horizontal, if that’s what you’re worried about,” and grinned a roguish grin.

  Tilda hated roguish grins, and that made her decision final. “No, thank you.” Wanting to avoid further debate, she gave him a quick peck on the cheek and said, “Thanks for dinner,” before stepping into the open elevator. But as the door started to shut, she added, “By the way, I like getting it when I’m vertical too.”

  Chapter 12

  Keeping people waiting is the most popular sport in the industry.

  The principle is simple. The hotter you are, the shorter the

  wait. People used to accuse me of typing up a chart of each

  week’s wait times to keep it straight. Baloney! I kept it all in my

  head.

  —SOPHIA VAUGHN, QUOTED IN “TEEN IDOL WORSHIPPERS,” BY TILDA HARPER, ENTERTAIN ME!

  ONCE Tilda read the message from Sophia, she abandoned her plans to check e-mail that night and instead packed and hit the sack so she’d be ready to check out obscenely early the next morning, at least by her standards. Matthew Boardman, the director of The Raven’s Prey, had retired to Sonoma Valley in California, and Sophia had helpfully arranged for Tilda to interview him by phone the next morning at nine-thirty. With the time difference, that would be half past noon, Boston time. So Tilda figured she could get back to Boston and book it to the Entertain Me! office to make the call from there.

  The first part of the plan worked just fine. She got up and moving in time to catch the eight o’clock express from Penn Station, which would put her into Boston at eleven-thirty. But at eight-thirty, just as she was about to eat the muffin she’d grabbed from the snack car, her cell phone rang.

  “Ms. Harper? This is Inez from the front desk at the Kimberly Hotel. A messenger just dropped off an envelope for you, and I wondered if I should mail it to your home address or your business address.”

  The messenger was almost certainly Juan with something else from Sophia—maybe a clue to Mercy’s whereabouts that she’d dredged up from who knows where. So Tilda wasn’t inclined to wait for the post office. “Inez, can I ask a favor? Could you open it and read it to me? I would really appreciate it.”

  “Of course.” There was the sound of an envelope being slit open. “It says, ‘Tilda love, it turns out Matthew can’t take your call until eleven-thirty, California time. Hope that doesn’t cause any problems.’ It’s signed ‘Sophia.’ ”

  “Shit!” Tilda said. Then, realizing that Inez might not be accustomed to her style of manners, she said, “Sorry. It’s just that I would have made other plans if I’d known that my call was going to be delayed.”

  “No problem. Should I mail you the letter for your files?”

  “Don’t bother. Just trash it. And thanks again.”

  “Shit!” Tilda said again as she put away her phone, this time to nobody in particular. She could have slept later instead of rushing out the door, and had a real breakfast. The muffin she’d been looking forward to no longer appealed to her, but after glaring at it for a few minutes, she decided she might as well eat it anyway. It wasn’t bad.

  Tilda drummed her fingers loudly on the arm rest, stopping only when the older man sitting across the aisle looked her way plaintively. She wanted a way to fill the time between getting to Boston and making the call to Boardman—the inefficiency of going home to Malden and then back to Boston rankled. So she got her case from the overhead rack, unpacked her laptop, and fired it up to look back over her notes, trying to find an alternative.

  Okay, she hadn’t had a chance to talk to Irv Munch at the funeral, and she probably should. But when she called his number, his assistant said he’d be out of the office for a few days. The woman grudgingly promised to give him Tilda’s message, but would not bend far enough to give Tilda his cell phone number.

  Tilda went back to her notes to look for the next loose end, but all she found was the name of the Boston-based bodyguard whose picture had been in Teen Fave, which was too skimpy to even call a lead. She drummed her fingers on her armrest again, forgetting the other passenger until he cleared his throat loudly.

  Okay, it was a lousy excuse for a lead, but what the hell. She’d never interviewed a bodyguard before. So she pulled out her cell phone once more to get the number for Tolomeo Personal Protection, then called and arranged to come by the office after her train arrived in Boston.

  Maybe it would be a waste of time—in fact it probably was going to be a waste of time—but it was better than sitting around doing nothing. She came up with a few questions to ask Tolomeo and Boardman, and with that done, put everything away again, hoping to nap for the rest of the ride.

  She’d just closed her eyes when her phone rang again. She didn’t recognize the number, but at least it wasn’t the Kimberly with a message postponing the phone call with Boardman until next month. “Hello?”

  “Tilda? Lawrence. How are you this morning?”

  “Not bad,” she lied.

  “Great. I just called the Kimberly, and they said you’d checked out already. I hope that doesn’t mean that you’re not available for lunch.”

  “Even worse,” Tilda said, looking out the window. “I’m somewhere in Connecticut, I think, on the train back to Boston.”

  “Damn!” Lawrence said. “I should have asked you about lunch last night. I might have been able to talk you into staying in town a little longer.”

  Tilda was impressed. He’d taken her refusal better than she’d expected, and persistence was always encouraging. “It’s just as well,” she said. “I’ve got appointments lined up as soon as I get back—I’m going to have to go straight to a meeting from South Station.” Then she added, “Things are really heating up on my story,” which was lying to herself as well as to Lawrence.

  “That’s great,” he said, sounding sincere, “but it doesn’t make me any less sorry to have missed you. Maybe another time? I want us to keep in touch.”

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  As she put her phone down one more time, she wondered if she’d misjudged Lawrence. Maybe he really was interested in her. Or maybe he was interested in stealing her story. Either possibility was flattering.

  With that pleasant thought to beguile her, two leads to follow up on when she got to Boston, and her phone shut off, Tilda finally managed to get to sleep. No doubt the man sitting across the aisle was as grateful for the restful interlude as she was.

  Chapter 13

  Q: What’s the most exciting thing being on TV has given you

  a chance to do?

  A: That’s easy—riding in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  I’ve always loved watching the parade on TV, and to actually

  be there was the coolest thing ever. And I couldn’t believe how

  many cute girls there were in New York!

  —“KISSING COUSINS’ BRAD ANSWERS TWENTY-FIVE PERSONAL QUESTIONS,” TEEN FAVE

>   SINCE Tilda never considered how a security firm went about decorating their offices, she wouldn’t have thought she had any preconceived notions, but as she opened the glass front door of Tolomeo Personal Protection, she realized she had expected something more butch. Bars on the windows, an armed guard in uniform, an office that looked particularly secure. Or since they specialized in celebrity protection, perhaps it would be like a well-appointed lawyer’s office with a miniskirted receptionist who would supply cappuccino and suggestive banter to waiting clients. Instead the place looked like nothing so much as the office space at the shop where Tilda got her car serviced.

  It had the same metal desk with a rubberized work surface, stacks of papers and invoices covering most of that work surface, battered PC, and half-filled coffee mug on top of the PC. Just like at the repair shop, copies of the Boston Globe from when the Red Sox won the World Series and from all three times the Patriots won the Super Bowl were pinned onto a cork board, and there were framed eight-by-ten photos haphazardly arranged on the wood paneling. The only difference was that when Tilda looked more closely, she saw that the pictures weren’t of company-sponsored soccer or softball teams. They were signed photos of Bette Midler, Aerosmith, U2, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Clint Eastwood, and other famous folk. Each photo included a lean man in a dark suit who aged his way through the pictures from a handsome, dark-haired stud right up to the handsome, gray-haired man sitting at the desk, talking on a headset as he typed into the computer.