Curse of the Kissing Cousins

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  “Do you have to locate her to write the article?”

  “No. In fact, since Jillian wants me to keep playing up the curse business, it’s almost an advantage to have her disappearance to talk about, since Holly’s death will be old news by the time the article comes out.” She winced at her own words. “I am a vulture, aren’t I?”

  “No more than I am when I get extra security jobs every time a celebrity stalker makes it into David Letterman’s house.”

  “You’re sweet to say that.”

  “Damn! I was going for bitterly cynical—I hear the chicks go wild for bitter cynicism.”

  She had to grin. “Anyway, no, I don’t need to find Mercy for the article.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But I really want to.” She didn’t know him well enough to tell him all of what she’d been thinking, so she said, “I want to know what happened to her, I want to know where she’s been all this time, I want to know her.” She paused. “Great, I’ve mutated from a vulture to a celebrity stalker. Is that an attractive picture or what?”

  “Absolutely,” Nick said. “The idea drives me wild.”

  “You are too damn perfect for words,” Tilda said flatly. “Hey, if I do find her and write an article about my experiences as a celebrity stalker, maybe that will help your business too.”

  “You’re being even more bitterly cynical than I was. I think we should drink to that.”

  On the way to the bar they ran into a cluster of Entertain Me! editors carefully evaluating the success of the party. Since Nicole was part of that cluster, Tilda took the opportunity to introduce Nick, and was in turn introduced to Nicole’s plus-one. She was pleased, in a very shallow way, to see that Nick was much cuter than Nicole’s date, and better dressed too. To make it even more shallow, she was inordinately pleased to see that Nicole noticed it too.

  Tilda said, “Jillian, I was thinking about interviewing Rachel Munch about her new movie, maybe with something about being second generation Hollywood. Do you think you’d be interested?” She was asking casually, because she knew a couple of other magazines that’d be happy to take it, though they didn’t pay as well as Entertain Me!

  “An actual working director,” Nicole said, laughing far too loudly as she turned to her date. “Tilda specializes in old shows, the older the better! The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, Kissing Cousins—all the has-beens!” She laughed even more loudly.

  It was nothing Nicole hadn’t said before, and if Irv Munch hadn’t been in earshot, Tilda would have ignored her the way she usually did. But even though his back was to them, she saw him stiffen. So this time she snapped, “Don’t call them has-beens!”

  “Excuse me?” Nicole said with feigned politeness.

  “Those people are just as talented as they ever were. Maybe they can’t get as much work anymore, because they’re out of style or because people think they’re too old, but the fact is that at one time in their lives those people were famous, and whether or not they ever do anything else to make themselves famous again, they still achieved a level that some of the people in this room would sell their souls for.” She gave Nicole a pointed look. “Their work entertained people, comforted them, and gave them happy memories. Maybe The Brady Bunch and Kissing Cousins weren’t high art, but people remember those ridiculous characters and those hokey plots. I bet there’s not a filmmaker in this room who doesn’t know the work of those so-called has-beens, and they’ve learned from it and been inspired by it.”

  Nicole, for once, was speechless, but Jillian jumped in with, “That’s good. Tighten it a bit, and you’ve got your lead.”

  “My lead?”

  “Give me a piece on how the TV shows of yesterday have inspired the young filmmakers of today, using Rachel Munch and her father as the focus.”

  “I wasn’t pitching—” Tilda started to say, but Jillian had moved away.

  Nicole, still not speaking, looked daggers at her, then stalked off, her plus-one following in her wake.

  “If I were here professionally tonight,” Nick whispered in Tilda’s ear, “I’d be keeping a close eye on that one. She really doesn’t like you.”

  “I don’t like her either,” Tilda said savagely.

  Rachel Munch came up to them. “Thank you for what you said. Any time you want or need anything from me or my father, just call. Anything at all.” She pressed a business card into Tilda’s hand. “And if you’d like to see my film next week, there will be two tickets waiting for you at the box office.” She smiled and went to rejoin her father.

  Tilda looked around the room and realized that she was the focus of considerably more attention than she was used to, and she was momentarily taken aback.

  “Did I just make a fool of myself?” she asked Nick.

  “Speaking as a professional who has seen quite a few celebrities making fools of themselves, I can assure you that you did not. Do you want to sit down?” Nick said.

  “Only if there’s a drink next to the chair.”

  As they headed for the bar with the shortest line, Tilda heard snatches of conversation starting with, “Did you know that the seven castaways were designed to represent the seven deadly sins?” and “I read that Carol Brady was the first divorcée in a television series—it was never stated explicitly, but—”

  Maybe the article she’d inadvertently pitched had a valid point to make.

  The party started winding down soon after that, with most of the attendees leaving to get to that night’s screening. Tilda was thinking it was time for Nick and her to go, too, when she was shocked to see Lawrence White coming their way, making for an awkward situation. What was the proper way to introduce a man whose amorous overtures she’d rejected to a man whose amorous overtures she was cultivating? She wasn’t sure there was a chapter on the topic in any of Miss Manners’s books, though perhaps there was something on the “Miss Gothic Ann Landers” Web site.

  In the meantime, she settled for, “Lawrence, this is a surprise.” Once they’d completed the air-kissing ritual he seemed to expect, she added, “Did the plane from New York to LA stop to fuel up here?”

  He laughed. “I decided to come for the film festival. I’ve got a hunch that a couple of these new directors are going to hit it big, and I wanted a shot at them now. I was also hoping I’d get to see you while I’m in town.” He looked at Nick questioningly.

  “Nick Tolomeo,” Nick said.

  “Lawrence White,” the other man answered, and they went into a round of competitive hand-squeezing. As far as Tilda could tell, Nick won.

  “Lawrence is a colleague of mine,” Tilda explained. “I met him at Holly Kendricks’s funeral.”

  “Terrible thing,” Lawrence said. “Have the police made any headway in the case?”

  “I don’t think so.” With Vincent on the job, she knew she would have been told promptly about any developments.

  “What about your investigation then? Have you found Mercy yet?”

  “I sound kind of like Diogenes, when you put it like that,” Tilda said. “He was looking for an honest man—I’m looking for Mercy.”

  Both men laughed, but she thought Nick was honestly amused while Lawrence was only being polite, which convinced her that she’d done the right thing in turning him down. That might have prompted her to sound more positive than she was when she answered, “Actually, I’ve got some very promising leads. A couple of things have turned up, and . . . Well, I don’t want to say too much to the competition. Just watch for my article in Entertain Me!”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it. Be sure to let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  They chatted a few minutes about the night’s screening, which Lawrence was attending, and then he had to leave to get there in time. As soon as he was gone, Nick said, “Promising leads? Whatever happened to ‘I’ve had no luck whatsoever?’ ”

  “Maybe I had a sudden epiphany.”

  �
��Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

  “But Nick,” Tilda cooed, “I’m not wearing any pants.” She smiled when he swallowed heavily, then gave him a break by changing the subject. “It looks as if things are winding down.”

  “So it does. Since you supplied the cocktails, can I buy dinner?”

  “That would be great. Just let me stop at the restroom.” She had the traditional reason for going to the bathroom, plus the nearly-as-traditional reason of checking out her hair and makeup. But perhaps the most important reason was so she could call home to warn Heather that she was hoping to have an overnight visitor.

  After an extremely pleasant dinner, she made the appropriate suggestion to Nick, and he accepted with enthusiasm.

  Chapter 21

  Rumor had it that my competitor Gloria Stavers at 16 would

  bed anything in pants. I was never like that. I always made

  them take their pants off first.

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

  “AND then what?” Cooper prompted Tilda as she told him about her evening with Nick the next day over lunch. They’d met at Charley’s, just down the street from the Entertain Me! office.

  “We went back to my apartment.”

  “And? And?”

  “What do you think? I pulled out my copy of Sense and Sensibility and he read aloud to me. It was most diverting.”

  “Don’t be a tease!”

  “Nick likes being teased.”

  “Aha! Then you did do it.”

  “Cooper, not only is that an unclear antecedent, but let me point out that most people outgrow that particular euphemism in high school. What Nick and I did was have initially awkward, moderately noisy, but eminently satisfying sex.”

  “What was the awkward part? Did he have requests you weren’t interested in?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s always awkward the first time—negotiating positions, foreplay, birth control.”

  “How romantic. Did you get it all in writing first?”

  She made a face at him. “I’m just saying it wasn’t the best bout of lovemaking I’ve ever had.” Then she grinned like the Cheshire Cat would have if he’d caught the Dormouse alone in an alley. “But it was in the top ten.”

  “More, give me more.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “You slut!” Cooper crowed, pounding his fists on the table. “Does he have any tattoos? Scars?”

  “No tattoos, one scar on his leg.

  “From defending somebody from a stalker?”

  “From defending himself from his grandmother’s poodle Pixie.”

  “I thought maybe he’d have some bodyguard scars. A gunshot crease or something.”

  “So sorry to disappoint you.”

  “But he’s in shape, right? He looked like he was in shape. A bodyguard has to be in shape.”

  “He works out, most definitely. His endurance was right on up there.”

  “Did he carry you into the bedroom like Kevin Costner carried Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard?”

  “No, Cooper. I carried him like Sam carried Frodo in The Return of the King.”

  “Bitch,” he said amiably. “I’m just saying that if I had a hunky Italian bodyguard, I’d take advantage of the situation.” He took a bite of his cheeseburger. “Did he bring his handcuffs?”

  “No, we used mine,” Tilda replied, then pounded her friend on the back when he choked on the burger.

  Once he was breathing again, Tilda asked, “How about the rest of your evening? You two went to the screening, right?”

  “It was okay—a little slow for my tastes, but Jean-Paul loved it. Then we went home like a boring married couple. Our being so damned monogamous is why I have to live vicariously through tramps like you.”

  “I’m happy to help.”

  “By the way, what happened with Nicole last night? She’s been even bitchier than usual today. She made Shannon cry twice!”

  Tilda told him about her impromptu defense of so-called has-beens, ending with, “I may have had too much to drink.”

  “Damn, I wish I’d heard it. I thought it might have been something you said, because I heard your name muttered more than once, but I was thinking it might be because her date was too friendly with you.”

  “I don’t think I even spoke to him, other than when she introduced us.”

  “I thought I saw you and your Italian stallion talking to him. Older guy, nice suit, better shoes.”

  “Oh, Lawrence. He wasn’t Nicole’s date. He’s that freelance reporter I had dinner with last week in New York. And before you ask, we did not do ‘it’ or ‘that’ or ‘whatever.’ Now that you mention it, he said he knew Nicole.”

  “That must be it. I saw the two of them talking in the corner right before Jean-Paul and I left. She never introduced me to her date, but she never talks to me at parties if there’s somebody else around she thinks will do her more good.”

  “You must adore coming to work with her every day.”

  “Today has had its moments,” he said with a grin. “Bryce was ripping Jillian a new one because the party went over budget, and Jillian aimed him at Nicole because she was in charge of the guest list and must have gone over quota. Bryce ripped her a new one too!”

  “And I missed it!” Tilda said. “Was it good?”

  “Spectacular! Like Charlton Heston throwing the Ten Commandments at the Israelites. I think Bryce was hungover—that’s when he gets really inspired.”

  “Next time, call me on your cell so I can listen in.”

  Cooper had to go back to work soon after that, and Tilda headed for Malden. She tried to work up some enthusiasm for her plan for the afternoon, which was to continue the tedious hunt for clues to Mercy’s love life that she’d started two days before. The preparations for the cocktail party had given her a full day’s reprieve, and since Nick and she had slept late, they’d barely gotten out of her place in time for him to make an appointment and for her to meet Cooper for lunch. That meant her computer lay in wait.

  She did manage to stall for a little while when she got back to her apartment, but checking the mail, changing into sweats, and getting a glass of Dr Pepper could be stretched only so far. Eventually she had to bite the bullet and boot up her system. Deciding another couple of minutes wouldn’t hurt, she checked e-mail before going onto the Web.

  There was a message waiting from Have_Mercy. It was short, but not at all sweet:

  Well? Had any luck tracking down Mercy the slut? You must have found SOME of her lovers by now. It shouldn’t be hard.

  Tilda drummed her fingers on her desk, considering how she should respond. The bastard still wasn’t giving her anything to go on.

  If you know something definite, just tell me. I have checked a number of sources, and there’s no sign that Ms. Ashford slept around. Unless you can give me something solid to go on, I’m going to close down this line of investigation.

  Tilda read it over, decided it sounded just irritated enough, and sent it. Then she assumed an air of martyrdom and went back to the Web for more Googling and bloodshot eyes. Considering how long she’d waited for the first reply, she wasn’t expecting to hear from Have_Mercy any time soon, but a few minutes later, another message arrived.

  How naive can you get? I was there—I saw what she was like. She was a whore. You’re swallowing this “holier than thou” shit the studio pumps out, like every other fangirl in the world, and you still have the balls to call yourself a journalist? What is wrong with you? You want names? Get out there and hump for them! It worked for Mercy!

  “That’s it!” Tilda snarled. She’d been polite long enough. If he wanted flames, he’d get them.

  If you really know anything, prove it. Give me something to go on. Tell me your name. Tell me how you know Mercy. But if you’re just a n00b, go away and quit bothering the grownups.

  She’d have slammed the send button if it had been physically possible, but sett
led for sending the message and stewing over it. Who was this asshole? She’d spent hours trying to prove there was something in his not-so-veiled hints, and the only one who seemed to know anything about Mercy’s promiscuity was him. The hell with Googling every variant spelling of Mercy Ashford. She was going after Have_Mercy!

  Since he was being so damned coy, her only connection was the Kissing Cousins Listserv, which meant she needed to talk to Vincent again.