“What?”
“Hell, why don’t I try to find him?”
“Excuse me?”
“Finding people is what I do. Why would it be so different to find a killer?”
“Hmm, let me think. Oh, I know! Because you don’t know who the killer is!”
Tilda waved that chunk of logic aside. “According to Vincent, the Weldon cops are looking at Holly’s husband and business rivals, and the Burbank cops are going to be thinking the same way, trying to find somebody who knew Noel.”
“You really don’t think they’ll make the connection?”
“Okay, they probably will, but I know the people involved in this better than the cops do.”
“So why don’t you know who the killer is?”
“Because I haven’t been looking for a killer—I’ve been looking for Mercy. But I’ve got ideas.”
“Like?”
“It could be a stalker. I’ve met some of the fans, and they can get pretty intense. You said yourself that fans sometimes carry relationships too far.”
“I did say that,” June conceded.
“Or Irv Munch could be trying to get publicity for a new show.”
“Kind of drastic.”
“The twins could be bitter because the other cast members never took them seriously.”
“At least it’s not a hidden twin theory,” June said. “Those are such clichés.”
“Kat Owen may not be as tolerant as she pretends to be. She could be killing off heathens.”
June just gave her a look.
“Okay, that one is lame. But there could be a reason from back when the show was being filmed that I don’t know about. Or maybe the killer just wanted to kill Noel, and killed the others first for camouflage. Or Noel could be doing it himself, and either tried to commit suicide or faked the poisoning to draw attention away from himself.”
“What about Mercy? Do you still suspect her?”
Tilda stopped pacing, still hating the idea, but said, “If she were killing people, it would certainly explain why I haven’t been able to find her.”
“Tilda, tell me you’re not going to make like Angela Lansbury.”
“You mean like Jessica Fletcher. Lansbury is an actress; Fletcher is the character in Murder, She Wrote.”
“Whatever. I’m back to being your big sister now, and I want to know you’re not going to go off playing detective.”
Tilda threw herself into her chair. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m a reporter, not a detective. I wouldn’t know how to investigate a crime anyway.”
“I’m glad you said that, or else I was going to have to do something drastic.”
“What would you do? Ground me?”
“Worse. I’d have called Mom.”
“Shit! You minivan-driving suburban moms play hardball.”
“Damned straight! You don’t survive lunchroom duty if you don’t have the balls to do what it takes. Speaking of being a mom—” She looked at her watch. “Are you going to be okay, because I left in the middle of laundry, and if I don’t get your niece’s soccer uniform washed, she’ll have to sit out of tomorrow’s game and—”
“Go, go! I wouldn’t want to be the cause of that.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Thank you for coming running.”
“That’s what big sisters are for. And don’t forget to thank your roommate for calling me.”
“That’s next on my list,” Tilda assured her.
She walked June down to her minivan, then walked to Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up half a dozen muffins to leave in the kitchen for Heather to find. As soon as she got to the apartment, she called in an order to Town Pizza House for a large pepperoni with extra cheese. There was more than one way to thank a person.
Chapter 23
Episode 40: Sherri-lock Holmes
When Pops’s bowling ball disappears, Sherri decides it’s been
stolen and, using her favorite teen detective books as a guide,
searches everybody’s rooms. When she finds it in Mercy’s
closet and drags in Pops to confront the “thief,” she finds out
that Mercy was only getting the finger sizes from the ball to
buy him a new one for his birthday. Pops gently reminds Sherri
that being nosy is never a good thing.
—FANBOY’S ONLINE KISSING COUSINS EPISODE GUIDE, BY VINCENT PETERS
BY the time she and Heather had gorged on pizza and muffins, Tilda was ready for bed—she’d never realized that having hysterics was so exhausting—but she knew that if she didn’t let Vincent know what had happened, he’d never forgive her. He answered the phone on the first ring.
“Tilda! Isn’t it terrible?”
“You’ve already heard?”
“Rhonda called me an hour ago, and I’ve been online ever since, spreading the word.”
“Rhonda? How did she find out?”
“What do you mean, ‘How did she find out?’ Who else could have arranged it?”
“Vincent, what are we talking about?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m talking about Rhonda selling off her Kissing Cousins collection. She’s already made a deal with the guy who’s running the Beantown Collectibles Extravaganza—she’s going to sell it all!”
“That’s a shame, but she’s been out of work a while now, right? She probably needs the money.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Vincent said with the nonchalance of somebody who’d never missed a paycheck. “But she’s abandoning the work of a lifetime. There’s no way any one collector will be able to buy the whole collection, so it will be broken up forever. History will not thank her for this!”
As she listened to Vincent’s view of historical importance, Tilda started to give more credence to her earlier idea of a crazed fan killing the Cousins. Anybody who thought the way Vincent did clearly wasn’t living on the same planet as she was. Though she’d long known about his occasional visits to Vincentland, before she’d always assumed it to be a peaceful place. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Come to think of it, what about Rhonda? Her collection had to be worth a lot more than it had been a few weeks before. She’d bragged that many of her items were autographed, and with three of the cast members dead, those things had become irreplaceable. Hadn’t she mentioned going both to California and Connecticut for job interviews? Tilda was sure the collector knew about Noel’s fondness for Sky Bars, and since Tilda had mentioned seeing Noel during the memorial service chat, Rhonda could have gotten the idea to use her name on the package.
Tilda pushed the thoughts away, mindful of her decision not to remake Murder, She Wrote. “Vincent,” she said, “I’m afraid I’ve got more bad news. Somebody poisoned Noel Clark.” When he gasped, she quickly added, “He’s still alive,” and told him what had happened.
“Oh my God!” Vincent squeaked when she was done. “I had the right date, but the wrong person.”
“What?”
“All day long I’ve been afraid to answer the phone or look at e-mail because today was the day Mercy was going to die—it never occurred to me that the killer might go after Noel.” Then, almost indignantly, he said, “He broke the pattern. It was Mercy’s turn.”
Tilda had forgotten about Vincent’s timeline. “Maybe there never was a pattern in the first place—the timing could just be coincidences.”
“Maybe,” he said, not at all convinced. “No, wait!” Tilda heard the sound of Vincent tapping at the keyboard. “That’s it! The character of Mercy was older than the character of Elbert, but the actress Mercy is a month younger than Noel. The killer is going in order of the actors’ ages, not the characters’! How could I have been so stupid?”
Tilda wanted to respond, but she honestly didn’t know what to say. On one hand, the whole timeline still sounded like donkey dung to her. On the other, Vincent had successfully predicted the date of the killer’s next attempt, even if he had had the target wrong.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The only one who nearly got Elbert—I mean Noel—killed was the person who sent the poisoned candy. You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?”
“Of course not!”
“Then stop shitting on yourself.” She realized she was echoing June’s comments to her earlier, in substance if not in style.
“You’re right,” he said. “I can’t fall to pieces now. The Cousins need me. You’ve already warned the rest of them, right?”
“I was about to,” she lied, “but I wanted to get you up to speed first.”
“How can I help?”
She paused, but realized there was something he could do. “Let me give you the name of the hospital where Noel was admitted. I couldn’t get any information on his condition, but maybe you’ll have better luck.”
“Consider it done.”
She had no doubt that within an hour he’d have dug up some connection by which he could get the man’s status, including blood pressure, temperature, and bladder output.
After hanging up the phone, she started looking up phone numbers. At first she was only planning to call Kat Owen, but decided she better call Gabrielle and Gwendolyn as well. She’d quoted them in her article, so the killer might well consider them legitimate targets. She added Irv Munch to the list too.
If she’d hoped to startle one of them into a telephone confession, she was disappointed. Nobody answered their phones. Instead she had to try to leave coherent voice mail messages, which admittedly she had down pat by the last call.
Next she sent an e-mail to Jillian, since she was going to include what had happened to Noel in her story. She’d have felt guilty about it if she hadn’t known the man. If he survived, he would appreciate the extra publicity. If he didn’t, he’d probably still appreciate it.
That done, she’d intended to go to bed, but found herself opening a file to type in the names of all the people involved with Kissing Cousins, past and present. Then she read the names over, realizing that any one of them could be a killer if she stretched her suspension of disbelief far enough. Even more fanciful scenarios than the ones she’d presented to June suggested themselves.
No, she wasn’t going to play that game. Even without June’s threat to call their formidable mother, she knew it was incredibly stupid even to speculate. It’s just that she was still so angry. The killer had used information from her article—he’d gone so far as to use her name! How could she let that go? She wasn’t going to start pretending to be a detective, but maybe, as she continued to research her story, she’d find out something that would help the police catch the rat bastard.
Idly she considered how the killer would react to the news about Noel. Surely he or she would be disappointed that the attempt had failed. Assuming that he hadn’t found Mercy, would he go after Noel again, or would he set his sites on Kat Owen or the twins? Was Irv Munch included on his hit list? How would it affect his timeline? If he followed his previous pattern, the next murder would take place in a week.
What was the point of that damned timeline anyway? She could come up with plenty of motives for the killings, though admittedly some were ludicrous, but she couldn’t imagine a reason why anybody would use accelerating deadlines. She’d never have realized there was a pattern at all if Vincent hadn’t figured it out, and she really hadn’t believed it even then. None of it made sense to her—maybe she should get June to play psychologist again and explain it to her.
As Tilda shut down her technology and got ready for bed, she realized that she was going to be the center of a lot of attention the next day: the cops, the fans, the people from Kissing Cousins were all going to want to talk to her. It might be her best chance yet to shake information out of them. All because she’d foiled the killer’s plan. Okay, the killer had been using her—now she was going to use him.
It gave her a feeling of deep satisfaction.
Chapter 24
Episode 20: Damon’s Collection
When Damon discovers a box of baseball cards in the attic and
learns that they’re valuable, he gets caught up in collecting
mania. Before long, he’s wheeling and dealing with other boys,
even cheating younger boys out of their collections. Only when
Mercy tells him the original collection was their late uncle’s
does he realize that sentiment outweighs dollars, and he returns
all of the cards except the ones he started with.
—FANBOY’S ONLINE KISSING COUSINS EPISODE GUIDE, BY VINCENT PETERS
AS she’d halfway expected, Tilda was woken the next morning by the telephone. But it wasn’t Vincent hungry for more details, or the police who had a right to those details, or even June, checking up on her. It was Nicole.
“Are you still in bed?” she said waspishly. “Must be nice!”
Tilda started to explain why she’d been up late, but stopped. Nicole wasn’t her boss, no matter what she might think. “You’re right—it is nice.”
Nicole sputtered a second before continuing. “Jillian forwarded me your note about that newest victim of the curse. We want your piece for next week’s issue, so I need your copy by the end of the day today.”
“Today? Jillian gave me until next Thursday, and I still haven’t found the actress who played Mercy.”
“Jillian says you don’t need her—just give me what you’ve got. We want the latest on the poisoning while it’s still fresh.”
“It’s not going to be all that fresh by the time the issue comes out,” Tilda pointed out, “so why not wait another week?”
“I want it now. If you can’t deliver, I’ll find a writer who can.”
Meaning herself, no doubt. “Can you forward me to Jillian? I want to talk to her about this.”
“Sorry,” Nicole said, sounding anything but. “Jillian flew out this morning for the editors’ meeting. She’ll be gone through the weekend, and she left me in charge.”
Shit! Tilda knew from previous years that short of an entertainment emergency on the level of Steven Spielberg dying or the Rolling Stones breaking up, Jillian was not to be interrupted during the biannual meeting.
“One other thing,” Nicole said, sounding smug. “I hear that some big time collector is going to be selling her Kissing Cousins collection.”
“Rhonda Hodgkiss?”
“That’s the one. I want a sidebar about it. With pictures.”
Many responses occurred to Tilda, most of them colorfully profane, but she bit her tongue. Nicole was only doing this to pay her back for showing her up at the cocktail party the other night. They both knew the sidebar would probably get spiked or cut down to nothing—it wasn’t an Entertain Me! kind of story. But if she wanted to keep the Kissing Cousins assignment, she would have to swallow it. “Fine, but I’ll have to make sure I can set up a time to interview Hodgkiss. I’ll call her and get back to you.”
Nicole hung up without saying good-bye, a habit she’d adopted after hearing that Anna Wintour of Vogue ended her phone calls that way.
Still not getting out of bed, Tilda dialed Cooper’s extension. “Cooper, this is Tilda.”
“Hey, Jean-Paul. What’s up?”
There was no way Cooper could have mistaken her voice for Jean-Paul’s, even if he’d misheard her. “Shit! Then Jillian really is out of the office.”
“Uh huh.”
“Nicole is throwing her weight around, making me rush the story.”
“There’s a lot of that going on around here today.”
“There’s a surprise. Anyway, I need to know the absolute drop-dead last second I could get my story in for the next issue.”
“Lunch Monday would be great, if you’re going to be downtown anyway, but it would have to be early. All the copy for the next issue will be in by one o’clock sharp, so I’ll have to start copyediting at 1:01.”
“One o’clock on Monday. Got it.”
“Love you too,” she trilled, and added, “Thanks, Cooper.”
As soon as she hung up from that call, she dug up Rhonda’s phone number to call her and explained that she wanted to see her collection for the article. Rhonda was all for it and said she could come at four-thirty that afternoon. Then, on a hunch, she dialed Jillian’s extension, and, sure enough, Nicole answered. The bitch was sitting at Jillian’s desk!
Curse of the Kissing Cousins Page 22
