Dead Air

by Mary Kennedy

  “Well, he’s been around for a while,” Lola admitted. “But that’s a good thing in an agent, being seasoned, I mean. He takes on very few clients, and I was thrilled when he agreed to represent me.”

  She gave her Victoria’s Secret push-up bra a little tug, and her assets threatened to spill out of her sundress. “I had to audition for him in a loft in South Beach last week, surrounded by all these sweet young things. I felt like I’d stumbled into a Hannah Montana look-alike competition.” Just for a moment, a sour expression passed over her face. “Anyway, I did Portia’s speech from Merchant of Venice and blew everyone away. As Edgar said, I really nailed it. I was the only actor he signed that day.”

  “Really.” Vera Mae busied herself with the pile of commercials scheduled for that day. “I don’t mean to break up this gabfest,” she said, glancing at the clock, “but what do you want to do for the show today? We go live in seven minutes.”

  I swung around to my desk, suddenly all business. In the excitement of Lola’s arrival, I had forgotten all about the missing Cecilia and her tubers.

  “Is there a problem?” Lola asked.

  Vera Mae grunted. “I’ll say. Our guest canceled at the last minute and we don’t have anything scheduled for today.”

  Lola clapped her hands together. “No guest? No problem!” She smiled winningly, like the host of a cheesy late-night infomercial. “Let me be your guest. I can talk about my life in the theatre. I’ve met all kinds of people, some famous and some not so famous. I’ve worked with some real characters. I bet your listeners would be fascinated.”

  “Mom, the topic has to be related to psychology,” I protested. Well, at least vaguely related, I thought, thinking of the “You and Your Colon” show we did a few days earlier.

  Lola looked stumped. “Psychology? That sounds like a snooze.”

  “Mom! It’s what I do, remember? Or what I did,” I said, between gritted teeth.

  There was a brief silence, and then Vera Mae snapped her fingers. “You know, we could try something different today. Stir things up a bit, just to keep it interesting. How would you like to be part of the show, Lola?”

  “I’m going to be the guest? Fabulous!” Lola was already out of her chair and heading toward the visitor’s seat next to the control board.

  “Not so fast.” Vera Mae blocked her path, clutching a pile of tapes in front of her like a shield. “You know, Lola, I was thinking about all those famous people you’ve worked with and how you had to get along with them. How would you like to cohost the show today? It’ll be a call-in show, and you and Maggie will field questions from the listeners.”

  “What’s the topic?” I asked, feeling alarm bells going off in my gut. I looked at the clock. Three minutes till we went live. Live!

  Vera Mae gave a little smile. “Relationships, ladies. Relationships. The good, the bad, the ugly.”

  Lola’s smile lit up the studio. “I love it!” she exclaimed. She was wriggling with excitement like Pugsley does when he hears the telltale crinkly sound of an open bag of potato chips.

  Suddenly she gave a little moue of concern and rested her hand lightly on mine, her eyes serious. “But maybe you better let me do most of the talking, Maggie,” she said huskily. “After all, I’ve had three husbands, six fiancés, and more gentleman callers that I can count, so this is really more my area of expertise than yours. No offense, darling.”

  Gentlemen callers? I vaguely remembered that line from The Glass Menagerie, when Mom had played Amanda Wing-field in summer stock in Provincetown many years ago.

  Lola gave a breezy smile as Vera Mae handed her an extra headset and I settled down next to her, fiddling with the mike. I noticed the board was already lighting up; we always have a few die-hard fans who are determined to be first in line, even if they don’t know what the day’s topic will be.

  “Live in five!” Vera Mae yelled, dashing around to the production room. I sat up straighter in my chair as Vera Mae pointed at me and silently mouthed, “Go!”

  “So the way I look at it, men are like shoes,” Lola was saying twenty minutes later in her smoky, theatrical voice. “They may look adorable, but if they don’t fit in the beginning, they’ll never fit right. Nothing you do will help. You’ll curse the day you saw them. I’m afraid the only thing to do, sweetie, is to toss them out and find yourself a new pair.” She gave a musical little laugh and paused for a beat. “Does that answer your question, Naomi?”

  “It sure does, Miss Lola. Men are like shoes. Gee, I’ve never looked at it quite that way before.”

  I bet, I said silently. It was annoying to admit, but all my years of psychological training couldn’t match my mother in action—she was a huge success with the audience. Warm, accessible, and witty, she managed to make an immediate connection with each listener. How did she pull it off?

  I was in awe—and green with envy. Maybe it was her acting ability, maybe she was genuinely empathic, but Lola was a hit.

  If anyone was measuring her Q Score that day, it would have been off the charts.

  Meanwhile, my loyal followers were deserting me in droves. After the first few minutes, they didn’t bother directing their questions to me; they turned to Lola for help with their problems.

  Or maybe I just wasn’t at my best. My mind was still going over Guru Sanjay’s murder and my meeting with the formidable Kathryn Sinclair. Her anger at Guru Sanjay was palpable, and beneath her stylish exterior, she reminded me of a tigress protecting her young.

  Was she capable of murder? My trusty 8-Ball would say: “Signs point to yes.” But what did she have to gain from his death, besides revenge? I drew a blank on that one.

  And then there was Lenore Cooper, whose A-list shrink status had been usurped by her ex-husband. She might profit from his death, especially if she decided to write a tell-all book. The only trouble with that theory was that Guru Sanjay had dumped her several years ago, so why would she take so long to do him in?

  There seemed to be no immediate motive to murder him, or was I missing something? Wouldn’t there be more money and more buzz in a tell-all book if Sanjay were still alive? So why would she kill the golden goose, if writing an ex posé was her aim?

  I was pondering my next move in the murder investigation when I suddenly realized there was a tiny sliver of dead air. Now was the time to jump in with a pithy comment, some keen psychological insight. Nothing came to mind, so a platitude would have to do.

  “Um, you know, sometimes it’s a mistake to bail out too quickly on a relationship,” I fumbled.

  Vera Mae locked eyes with me for an instant and then jabbed a button. She must have decided that my inane comment didn’t even deserve a follow-up. “Abigail on line three. She has a question for Lola.”

  Foiled again!

  “Lola, I think you were on my favorite soap a few years ago,” a female voice raced across the line. “You played Martina on Troubled Hearts, didn’t you? I’m so excited that you’re on the radio today, I can hardly breathe! I watched every single episode of that show.”

  I rolled my eyes. Forget about On the Couch with Maggie Walsh. We had morphed into Soap Watch with Lola Walsh.

  “Yes, indeed, I played Martina Saint Pierre on Troubled Hearts, and it’s always nice to be remembered.” Lola gave a happy little sigh. “You know, I’ve been so busy with the theatre lately, I haven’t had the chance to do any soaps.”

  “You were wonderful. And so beautiful,” Abigail said in an awestruck tone.

  Lola put her hand on her heart, her eyes welling up a little. “I’ll always look back fondly on those early days in New York. Acting in the daytime dramas was my first entrée into show business.”

  “I loved that whole story line with Root and Sledge,” Abigail continued. “I cried when Sledge had an affair with the Romanian nanny and didn’t tell anyone about it. Not even his own brother, Root.”

  “Yes, that Sledge,” Lola said fondly. “He was quite the scamp. And of course I’m sure you remember
that a baby resulted from”—Lola paused delicately—“that dalliance.” A long beat. “Baby Giuseppe.”

  Baby Giuseppe? I raised my eyebrows, but Lola ignored me.

  “Hey, I remember that scene!” Vera Mae’s face lit up. “Sledge was stranded at a cabin in Big Sur with the nanny and he had to deliver the baby himself. I always wondered why he never told anyone about it. It was like he forgot the whole thing ever happened.”

  “Delivering your own baby in a mountain cabin? That seems like a pretty big thing to forget,” I interjected. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Lola perched on the edge of her chair, her mouth open wide like a seagull hoping for a flying carp.

  “A lot of our viewers wrote in about that plotline,” Lola said disarmingly. “You’re right, they did think it was a little far-fetched. Delivering a baby isn’t like delivering a pizza, you know.” Again, the girlish laugh that sounded like temple bells.

  “Exactly!” Abigail agreed. “And it would have stayed a secret forever, except for that whole episode with Carlotta in Genova Hospital. She was out for revenge, right, Lola?”

  “She certainly was,” Lola said sweetly. “Carlotta never learned that revenge is a dish best served cold.”

  Hmm. A dish best served cold. My mind had been playing with the notion of revenge, secrets, and the idea of waiting to put the screws to someone. Would that explain Lenore Cooper’s timetable for polishing off Guru Sanjay? After all, she had years to watch his meteoric rise to fame while her own career faltered, book sales dropping, speaking gigs tapering off. So was she biding her time, secretly plotting his demise?

  Time to get back into my own show. “You know, sometimes we block things from our consciousness,” I began. “It can be a defense mechanism, or it can be the result of—”

  “And does anyone out there remember how Carlotta finally got her revenge?” Lola asked her new fans in radio-land. “This was a key plot point,” she explained helpfully.

  Vera Mae, who was standing behind the glass window in the control room, chewed on a pencil nub, deep in thought. She looked so intent, you would think Alex Trebek were standing by with a big fat cash prize for the right answer.

  “I remember!” Abigail yelled. “Carlotta had a baby with Sledge’s twin brother.”

  “Getting back to our original topic—,” I cut in.

  But once again, Vera Mae was too quick for me. “Well, folks, we just have time for one more call and then . . . oops, we have to take a commercial break right now!” Vera Mae punched a button on the control panel, yanked off her headset, and skittered around to our side of the window.

  “What a show!” She hugged Lola and said happily, “You know, this past hour just flew by. I think this is the best Maggie Walsh show we’ve ever had!”

  I was trying to think of a clever comeback when Cyrus stuck his head in the door, grinning from ear to ear. He gave a big thumbs-up. “Great show, kids! Keep up the good work, Lola. We just may have to hire you! You’d be quite an addition to the WYME team.”

  Lola was beaming. “Wouldn’t that be fun, honey? The two of us working side by side.”

  Chapter 14

  Mom followed me back to the condo, and after arming each of us with an ice-cold Corona with a wedge of lime, I decided to tell her about the murder investigation. She was still flush from her stint as a radio host and was dancing around the room with Pugsley in her arms, doing a modified tango to a Ricky Martin number. Pugsley was thrilled at the attention and licked her nose rapturously at every twirl, glancing at me over her shoulder. He was practically drooling with happiness and was wriggling so hard, I was afraid she might drop him.

  Mom was only half listening to my story, but when I got to the part about Lark being pulled in for questioning, she came to an abrupt halt, turned off the radio, and plunked an annoyed Pugsley down on the parquet floor. Shrugging at the fickleness of humans, he trotted off to his dish of kibble.

  “And the really shocking thing is that they aren’t even looking at other suspects. They’ve zeroed in on Lark.”

  “They suspect Lark? Everyone knows that sweet little thing isn’t capable of murder! Who’s in charge of the investigation? Maybe I can pull some strings. Or at the very least, I can march down there and give that detective a piece of my mind.”

  “Mom, that’s not a good idea,” I said hastily. I could just picture my mother confronting Rafe Martino and shuddered at the visual. “This is a police matter. There’s nothing you can add to the case. I only got involved because I’m Lark’s roommate. And her friend.”

  “I did a couple of Matlocks, you know,” she said, settling herself into a rattan basket chair I’d picked up at a yard sale. It had a green and white cushion silk-screened with palm trees and could have been a knockoff of one of the pieces in the Humphrey Bogart Collection.

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” I prompted her.

  “I’m simply saying that I’m clued in to how the legal system works.” She was all set to stroll down memory lane, but before she could do a riff on Andy Griffith in his blue and white seersucker suit, I whirled around to cut her off.

  “You did some Matlocks?” I raised my eyebrows. “This is the first I’ve ever heard of it.”

  It’s a standing joke in Hollywood that whenever actors want to beef up their résumés, they use Matlock as a credit because they figure no one will ever check. After all, they must have taped a zillion Matlock shows, so who would know? It’s not like anybody’s going to call the producer and double-check.

  “Well, maybe it was just one Matlock,” Mom said, backpedaling quickly. “And it was a guest shot, so I had very little screen time.” Now we were getting closer to the truth. If Mom said she had very little screen time, that meant it was a walk-on; she was probably an extra. Or maybe she was an “under five,” meaning she had fewer than five lines. An “under five” might be a waitress in a diner, yelling something like, “Two corn beefs on rye, extra mustard and hold the mayo!” Or a receptionist in a medical drama saying, “The doctor can see you now.” It’s not usually something you highlight on your résumé. In fact, mentioning such a tiny part on your résumé smacks of desperation.

  I raised my eyebrows and she chewed thoughtfully on a sourdough pretzel stick. “Actually, I may take Matlock off my résumé. It makes me seem a little . . . mature, you know. Maybe I should put The O.C. down instead. That sounds much better, doesn’t it?” she said, taking a swig of her Corona.

  “The O.C.?”

  “Yes, Maggie, The O.C. It sounds young and hip. Don’t you keep up with these things?”

  “Of course I’ve heard of The O.C.,” I said, but I couldn’t stop her. Mom was on a roll.

  “The O.C.,” she continued, “One Tree Hill, Laguna Beach, and all those reality shows filled with beautiful young people. I can hardly keep up with them. It’s a youth-oriented culture, darling, a youth-oriented culture. You have to stay on your toes. No one cares about classical training anymore; they care about cheekbones and hair extensions. In my day, it was all about the work. Trodding the boards, studying with the great masters like Stella Adler and Sanford Meis ner. The most important thing in those days was honing one’s craft.”

  She put the beer bottle down on a WYME coaster, and her expression clouded for a moment, as if she were contemplating the dismal state of her acting career. I hated to admit it, but she had a point. Outside of old favorites like Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Kea ton, how many working actresses are there over the age of fifty? Things are tough in Tinseltown, and she knew it.

  Still, it was time for a reality check.

  “Mom, you were never on The O.C.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t be such a stickler for details,” she said. “A minor point. I would have been terrific on that show, but I didn’t have Edgar then, and my agent never even sent me over to meet the producers.”

  “A pity.” I sneaked a peek at my watch. I tried to be surreptitious, but Mom was
too quick for me.

  “Well, let’s get back to Lark,” she said, switching gears. “How did her name even come up? What’s her connection to this guru who was murdered?”

  “It’s very circumstantial. She was the last person to see him alive, but she did have a good reason to be angry with him. She gave him a push and it’s not certain if he fell and hit his head. Nothing seems really certain except that foul play was involved. They don’t even have the autopsy results yet, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the Cypress Grove PD. Lark is their main suspect. Their only suspect.” I quickly filled her in on the incident in Guru Sanjay’s hotel room but stopped short of mentioning Lark’s criminal background. I decided it would be best to let Lark bring up the subject herself, when she felt the time was right. I still had trouble believing it, and I wondered whether somehow Nick had left out part of the story. Not deliberately, of course, but maybe there were some details that he didn’t know about.

  We moved out onto the tiny balcony, sitting side by side on a couple of navy canvas deck chairs, my latest find from “Tarzhay.” The balcony is probably only fifty square feet, but it overlooks a shady garden and a pretty little fountain spilling into a pond. I watched the copper green metal dolphins twirling in the spray, the droplets looking like tiny crystals as they landed on the terra-cotta tiles edging the pond.

  It was late afternoon, and now that the haze of the day had burned off, a golden glow was settling over the scene. The scent of freshly mowed grass mingled with the fragrance of the white magnolia bushes rimming the edge of the garden. The sun was hanging low in the sky like a big orange lollipop, and a soft breeze was ruffling the fronds on the coconut trees. If it hadn’t been for this pesky business of a murder investigation, all would be well with the world.

  Half an hour later, I decided to throw together a quick dinner on the balcony—quesadillas roasted on the grill, sliced tomatoes with raspberry vinaigrette, and a corn and black bean salad from the deli. The doorbell rang just as I slapped some crumbly cheddar cheese and roasted red peppers into the last tortilla.