Blast from the Past

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  “I’m fine,” Tilda said firmly. “What could happen with you two looking out for me?”

  “Sure, like I’ve been looking out for Pete,” Dom said. “Here you’ve been trying to help him, and I yelled at you.”

  “Does that mean you believe Pete now?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah, I believe him. I could swallow the idea of him getting drunk and lying about it, but I cannot swallow the idea of him trying to kill Tilda. My instincts may be getting a bit shaky, but not that shaky.”

  “God, that’s a relief,” Tilda said. “I was starting to think that I was the one whose instincts were off.”

  “Like hell!” Dom said. “Pete’s damned lucky you were around to show me what a fool I’ve been.”

  There were a dozen things Tilda probably should have said, but all she could think of was, “Would you like a cookie?”

  Dom was willing to keep apologizing all night long, but with Nick’s help, Tilda eventually got him calmed down long enough to discuss Pete’s situation. A little while later, when he caught Tilda yawning, he jumped up and started pushing Nick toward the door. The last thing the older man said was, “Don’t you worry about Pete, Tilda. Nick and I are going to take care of him, and you, too.”

  After all that had happened, Tilda expected to toss and turn for the rest of the night, but she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Chapter 32

  When Dylan O’Taine first encounters the Jengu, he misconstrues their motives and treats them as enemies. It is only when Flotsam and Jetsam show their fondness for the strange-looking beings, that he realizes they may have things to teach him.

  —TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA ARTISTS: THE BEST OF INDIE COMICS BY JERRY FRAZEE

  TILDA slept in the next morning, and considering the day and night she’d had, she didn’t even feel guilty. When there was a knock on her door around eleven, she was expecting it to be either Nick or Dom-the-apologetic again, but when she looked through the peephole, she saw her sister June.

  She opened the door and let her in. “Nick called you, didn’t he?”

  “Glad to see you, too. And actually it was his father.” Then her eyes widened when she got a look at the room. “My gosh, I am in the wrong business!”

  “It’s a guilt suite,” Tilda assured her. “The Glenham Bars Inn wants to make sure I don’t make a stink about their security measures.”

  “Hey, if they were slack about security, you’re damned well going to make a stink. And if you don’t, I will.”

  “I don’t think this was their fault,” Tilda said. “Even Nick and Dom said they’d taken all the reasonable precautions.”

  “Nick!” June said in a tone of distaste. “Who cares what he says?”

  “I told you that we’re still friends.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s a nice guy.”

  “Nice guys don’t dump my sister.”

  “Are you saying that I don’t date nice guys?”

  June wagged a finger at her. “Don’t play word games with me. I reserve the right to bad-mouth any man who breaks up with you.”

  “Did you drive all the way from Beverly to bad-mouth my ex?”

  “No, I drove down to find out why somebody is trying to kill you. Again.”

  “I think it must be my winning personality.”

  “Tell me, or I tell Mom.”

  Tilda knew her sister well enough to know that it was no bluff. “Okay, but can we get something to eat first? I’m starved.”

  “It’s kind of early for lunch, but . . .”

  “Lunch? I haven’t had breakfast yet!”

  After their usual sniping about whether it was better to be a night owl or a morning lark, they found the room service menu and ordered. Tilda didn’t love the idea of explaining what had been going on where anybody else could hear them, and what was the fun of having a guilt suite if she didn’t use room service?

  While they waited for Tilda’s breakfast and June’s lunch—the room service people saw nothing wrong in their ordering from different sides of the menu—Tilda told June what had happened the night before, including the gist of the conversations with Pete, Nick, and Dom. Though she hadn’t told Nick and Dom about Pete’s past, she did tell June. If she couldn’t trust her big sister, then who could she trust?

  The food arrived at an opportune pause, and Tilda dug into her omelet while June tackled her club sandwich. By mutual accord, they decided to forgo further discussion of murder during their meal. Instead they talked about June’s kids and the latest challenges of parenting. Tilda didn’t mind listening to it all—it was a great reminder of why she kept birth control handy.

  “How about the Pharos article you’re working on?” June asked after a lengthy description of the effort it took to produce a really first-class social studies project. “Does it feel strange to be working with a big-name star? Somebody who is still in the public eye, I mean.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “It’s just that the guys I usually interview are really open—they’ll tell great stories about people they’ve known and worked with. Really funny stuff, and not just dirt, though there’s plenty of that. Laryea is too intent on protecting his reputation. He’ll only say nice things about people, but nothing too specific, and he’ll only say how wonderful it is to be working on this movie, and how wonderful it is to be in Cape Cod.”

  “In Cape Cod?”

  “He’s not from around here, June. Anyway, it’s not very satisfying.”

  “That’s good to know, isn’t it? Now you’ll be able to go back to your usual kind of story knowing you’re doing what you like.”

  Tilda ate a few more bites to avoid answering.

  “Right?” June said pointedly.

  “If I can,” Tilda said. “I may have lost my touch.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There was this guy I was hunting for Entertain Me! I interviewed one of his costars, who swore up and down she didn’t know where the guy was. Then as soon as I was off the phone, she called the guy and told him I was looking. The guy went directly to the magazine and left me in the cold.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Then there are all these wannabes I’ve been dealing with. It seems as if I should at least have a gut reaction about which one is Leviathan, but I’ve got nothing.”

  “What if it’s none of them?”

  “Then I’m in even worse shape. I networked my ass off to dig these guys up. And then there’s Pete. If he hadn’t told me, I still wouldn’t know for sure that he used to be Spencer Marshall. Maybe I should stick with Laryea and people like him—they can be hard to get to, but they’re easy to find.”

  “Let me get this straight,” June said. “First, a professional actor—a professional liar, in other words—manages to fool you. Then you have problems finding a comic book artist from twenty years ago—bearing in mind that you’re not a big comic book fan and had to make a whole new set of connections to even start searching. Then you recognize a man who was in a kids’ TV show that you’ve probably only seen half a dozen times in your life, even though he was only a kid when the show was filmed, but you suck because you weren’t willing to swear to it. Oh yeah, you’re clearly losing your touch. It’s time to find a new career, maybe something in fast-food preparation or domestic engineering.”

  “You have a peculiar way of expressing sympathy.”

  “If you needed my sympathy, you’d get it. When what you need is a swift kick in the pants, I’m ready, willing, and able to oblige.”

  Tilda finished the last of her omelet. “Okay, my pants have been sufficiently kicked. I can do this thing.” Unlike TV or the movies, there was no musical crescendo, but she did feel as if she’d achieved at least a minor epiphany. “And with Dom and Nick taking over the murder stuff, I can concentrate on Leviathan.”

  June cocked her head. “You sound almost disappointed about that.”

  “Are you kidding? Do you think
I like this kind of thing?”

  “Are you kidding? Do you think you don’t?”

  Tilda wished she had more eggs to chew on along with the thought, but she’d have to navigate through this epiphany without a prop. “Here’s the thing. Some reporters I know really enjoy being published, but sweat over the actual process of producing words. They like having written, but not the writing. I think I’m that way with the murders. I like having figured them out—the analog to being published. But the middle part of doing the work and being scared, not so much. Does that make sense?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Why do you always answer my questions with another question?”

  “Why shouldn’t I ask questions?”

  Tilda threw her napkin at June, June returned it with gusto, and the conversation went on hiatus for a few moments.

  Afterward, Tilda said, “Anyway, I think what I said makes sense, and I hope that Dom and Nick getting involved won’t take away from my smug satisfaction when they figure out who was really driving that limo. In the meantime, I have got to figure out who Leviathan is, and I’ve only got three more days.”

  “You are going to meet the candidates face-to-face, right?”

  “I’m planning to, though I’m hoping that I’ll have a smaller pool to draw from. Which reminds me—I should check e-mail.” She set up her laptop and logged in. “Baby! Contestants Number One and Three didn’t know that Pharos is based on the real Monomoy Point Lighthouse.”

  “I take it that this means something to you.”

  “It means that now I only have to meet with three people, instead of five. Since you’re here, you can advise me on how to handle them.”

  She and June plotted the logistics of where and when, pulling Nick in by phone to arrange for a strong-arm presence in case anybody got unruly. When that was done, Tilda wanted to talk about the questions she’d pose to the wannabes to get them to prove their bona fides, but June said, “You still like Nick, don’t you?”

  “We’re friends. I generally like my friends.”

  “You like him more than that.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?”

  “Make up your mind! I thought bad-mouthing him was your favorite hobby. Besides which, he’s seeing somebody else.”

  “So?”

  “So no poaching! Remember what you told me about girls who poach? Back in high school?”

  “That was when you tried to flirt with my date! Besides if anybody poached, it was this other woman. You saw Nick first!”

  “Nick chose her,” Tilda said, which ended it as far as she was concerned. It took a little longer to convince June, but eventually she gave up and helped Tilda plan her attack on the Leviathans. She headed back home only after extracting a promise from Tilda to be careful.

  Chapter 33

  Leviathan played with aquatic mythology and folklore from many cultures: Pharos was an ancient Egyptian lighthouse, Dylan O’Taine is from Welsh mythology, the Asrai and Blue Men of the Minch are Scottish, the Bunyip come from the Aboriginal Australians, and the Fosse Grim is Scandinavian.

  —TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA ARTISTS: THE BEST OF INDIE COMICS BY JERRY FRAZEE

  WITH the arrangements in place, it was time to invite the final three contestants to come to the Cape. Tilda had thought it might be interesting to have all three show up at once, and then have a smackdown to see who got the Leviathan crown, but June convinced her that meeting them one at a time would probably work better.

  Fortunately, all three lived within day-trip range, and had the weekend off. Though Tilda knew that Leviathan had used a Cambridge post office box back in the day, she also knew that he could have moved anywhere in the world. She was just glad she didn’t have to try to play spot-the-phony via video conference.

  There was a bit of back-and-forth with e-mail to get times scheduled, but eventually she had it all worked out. Contestant number one would come after lunch the next day, with the other two coming on Sunday. That was cutting it tight, since the last day of shooting would be the day after that, but she was hoping for the best.

  While Tilda was hoping that just meeting the contenders would be enough to help her decide which one was really Leviathan, just in case her psychic powers were on the blink that day, she started putting together a list of questions to ask them.

  She flipped through her Pharos comic books and came up with a couple of good questions, and then found another in the interview with Marc Fitzwilliam in the graphic novel, but she still wasn’t satisfied. A good imposter might be able to bullshit his way past those hurdles. She needed something definitive, something that would leave no doubt in her mind.

  She pulled out the stack of correspondence between Leviathan and Fitzwilliam and read the letters over again, and found something that might do the job. It all depended on the accuracy of Fitzwilliam’s memory. She found his phone number and reached for the phone.

  “Marc, this is Tilda Harper calling again.”

  “How’s the Leviathan hunt?”

  “Let me put it this way. Do you remember the time Dylan O’Taine had to fight the Asrai, and every time he defeated one, another one swam up? It’s like that.”

  “Ouch.”

  “At least I’ve got it to the last three. I was looking at the letters that you faxed me, and I wondered about some of the edits that were made to the comic. Nobody ever did any editing on Pharos but you, right? You didn’t have a copyeditor or anything?”

  He laughed. “I didn’t even have a dictionary. I had to check with Mom if there were words I didn’t know.”

  “So you and he are the only ones who’d know what the original versions were, right?”

  “Right.” Before Tilda could get too excited, he added, “Only I never really changed his stories in a major way. There were just a few times I asked him to change wording, or redraw a panel.”

  “I see notations on your letters about ‘a paragraph on page four’ and ‘misspelled word on page twenty-eight,’ but it doesn’t say what the corrections were.”

  “Yeah, I marked up the photocopied pages and sent them back to Leviathan—it was easier that way.”

  “I don’t suppose you kept a photocopy of the markup.”

  “No, sorry. I didn’t run a copy shop back then, which meant I’d have had to pay for every single page I copied. I was pinching pennies pretty tightly, so that was out. And I don’t think I could remember what the original words were, if that’s what you were going to ask next.”

  That had been exactly what she was going to ask. “What about the art? Do you remember any of those changes?”

  “No, not really. Of course, if you had the pages themselves, you could see for yourself.”

  “Say that again.”

  “A few times when Leviathan sent me photocopies of completed pages, I found problems with the art on a particular panel. So I told him what I wanted done differently and he fixed it. Which means that he cut a piece of bristol board the same size and shape as the original panel and glued it onto the page. Then he made the correction.”

  “So I could peel off that corrected panel gently enough to see what was underneath?”

  “It would depend on how he glued it down, but if they could figure out what was originally on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, there must be somebody who could do that for a comic book page.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Tilda said.

  “The thing is, I don’t have any of the original pages. I sent them all back to Leviathan—it was part of our deal.”

  “That’s all right. Thanks, Marc.” Tilda hung up the phone, and then let herself get excited. Marc might not know where any of the original Pharos pages were, but she did. There were some just down the hall in Joni’s suite.

  Of course, she didn’t know for sure that any of those pages had corrected panels, or if Joni would be willing to risk damaging them. So she tamped down on her glee long enough to consult her contact list, and hit
the phone to do some research.

  Several hours later, Tilda knocked on Joni’s door. The producer was alone for once, and said, “I hope you’ve got good news about Leviathan.”

  “Not yet,” Tilda admitted, “but I’m getting closer. I’ve got an idea for eliminating the rest of the pretenders, but I need to take a look at the pages you’ve got here.”

  “Sure thing,” Joni said. The pages Dolores had fussed about carrying around were matted and shrink-wrapped in some kind of archival plastic for protection. Joni had ten different pages, and Tilda was momentarily distracted by the pleasure of seeing the original artwork in all its glory. Fortunately she wasn’t so distracted that she didn’t notice that a frame on a page from the final issue had been corrected. Now for the hard part.

  “Joni,” she said, “I need to ask a huge favor. You see how this page here has a panel that’s been cut out and glued on top of the original piece of paper?”

  Joni looked more closely. “You’re right. I never noticed that.”

  “According to the man who edited Pharos, that panel is one where he asked Leviathan to change something, and the only way to do it was to cut out a new piece of paper, paste it down, and draw the corrected panel.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want to lift off the panel on top to see what’s underneath.”

  “Why?”

  “Because nobody has seen that original panel except the editor and Leviathan himself. So I’m going to ask the rest of the wannabes what’s there.” Of course, there was always the chance that Leviathan wouldn’t remember, but she was betting that he would. Maybe Fitzwilliam hadn’t, but he’d edited a lot of books. Leviathan had just drawn the one, and this particular panel was in a climatic section of the final issue. Surely he’d remember why he’d had to redraw it.

  “Will it hurt the page?” Joni asked.

  “Not if it’s done properly, and I just happen to have just the right person for the job.” It had taken Tilda some elaborate networking to find somebody both capable and willing, but thanks to the dozens of art museums around Boston, she’d tracked down an art conservator at Harvard’s Fogg Museum who was a stone comic book fan and who’d be willing to drive to the Cape for no payment other than a chance to see some of the actual pages from Pharos. To sweeten the pot, Tilda was throwing in some swag from True Blood and some reading copies of old Power Pets comics. “She can be here first thing in the morning to take a look, and if she’s not completely sure she can do it without damaging the page, she won’t even try.”