Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Yeah, so that was disgusting. People were moving in every direction, mostly away from Kathleen, saying things like, “Oh God” and “Yuck.”
Wendy immediately called out, “Louis! Can you clean this up?!”
“Um, I was hired to put food in… Not deal with it when it comes out.”
After she wiped her mouth, Kathleen began to scream, “What’s happening to me?!”
“Ed, would you…” Wendy said. The grip walked by them to go to the craft room and get wet paper towels.
Donald was saying, “Kathleen, Kathleen… it’s going to be all right.”
“What the fuck do you know about it?” she snarled at him, suddenly falling completely out of character. Making me wonder, briefly, what it must be like to spend your whole life playing a part. All the time. Each and every day. Then she slipped back into character. “Jesus! Jesus, take me home!”
Wendy and Donald led her back to her dressing room. I wondered where Heston had gone to. He hadn’t participated in the prayer circle, which was weird. I mean, he didn’t look like he was following his mother’s path, but she did seem like the type to insist that he at least pray.
“Is it possible Finn didn’t overdose?” Eldridge asked.
“What makes you say?—”
“I mean, she sort of has some of the same symptoms. He got kind of delusional, and she just got… kind of delusional. Unless you really think she saw Jesus?”
“I seriously doubt she saw Jesus,” Louis said. “Even if I believed it possible to see Jesus, I doubt a vision of our Lord and Savior would be followed by vomiting.”
“It was Amber on the catwalk,” I said.
“What was she doing up there?” Marc asked.
“She wanted to make calls,” I said. “Maybe there’s a signal up there. Or maybe she’s trying to find a way onto the roof.”
“If she got on the roof there’d be a signal. Do you think she’d have the decency to call the police?” Louis asked.
Marc, Eldridge and I said “No” at the same time.
“Do you think Kathleen’s going to die?” I asked.
“I hope not,” Eldridge said. “I mean, not because I like her. I just?—”
“You guys don’t think Finn was on drugs? You think they were both poisoned?” I asked them both.
“I do,” Louis said. “The thing is… they didn’t have anything other than the Juicy Juices, did they?”
“Neither of them came to the table while I was there,” Eldridge said. “And pretty much everyone else ate from the table at some point.”
“They each had a pop,” I remembered. “Amber brought Finn a Diet Coke. I didn’t see him drink it, though. Later I brought a 7-Up, but that was after he got sick. Kathleen had a 7-Up. We’re talking cans, though. It would be very difficult to put anything in them. And, well, no one could know who’d get which can.”
“There had to have been something in the Juicy Juice.”
“But everyone had a Juicy Juice,” I pointed out.
“It has to be in the special green goop they use. Both drinks used that. And no one else had it.” Louis looked at me closely, then very calmly said, “We should go get that and keep it safe.”
The three of us hurried back to the craft room. Marc and the others had already gone back to their dressing rooms. Once we were in the craft room, Louis opened the cooler that contained all the fruit. Very quickly he saw… “It’s not here.”
“Someone got here first,” I said, stating the obvious.
“What do you think they’ll do with it?” Eldridge asked.
“They’ll want to find a way to get rid of it,” Louis said. He glanced at the sink, which was still filled with ice and sodas. “Obviously, they didn’t get rid of it in here.”
“Bathroom,” I said. “I’d flush it down the toilet.”
We dashed out of the craft room and down the hall to the restrooms. When we entered the men’s room, I was surprised by how small it was. There was only a toilet and a sink. There was no window. When I turned on the light a fan built into the ceiling came on.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Eldridge asked.
Louis was looking into the toilet, and he said, “This.”
I stepped over and looked down. There were two cigarette butts floating in the toilet. It was disgusting, but it did make sense. Southern California was constantly going in and out of droughts. We’d all learned long ago that you didn’t flush a toilet unless absolutely necessary. Cigarette butts would not count as a necessary flush.
“So, the green goop wasn’t flushed down this toilet,” I said.
“Nope.”
Without a word, Louis left the men’s room and ran into the women’s room next to it. Eldridge and I were right behind him.
“I beg your pardon!” Grace said when we entered.
She was leaning up against the wall smoking a cigarette. It was very crowded in there with the four of us.
“I could have been using the facilities!”
“Then you’d have locked the door,” Louis said. He stepped over and stared into the toilet.
“This is all too weird. I needed a cigarette.”
“You didn’t flush the toilet, did you?” Louis asked.
“No. I told you. I came in here to smoke.”
“Was anyone in here?”
“No. What’s going on?”
“We think Kathleen and Finn were poisoned,” I explained. “And the poison was in the green goop they use for some of the drinks. Now the green goop is missing.”
Of course, I realized immediately that Grace could have been the poisoner, and she’d just come down here to flush the evidence down the toilet and cover up by smoking—no, I didn’t think it was her. When would she have poisoned the goop? How would she even know there would be goop? And how would she know who’d be drinking the goop?
“Let me get this straight. Someone poisoned the drinks. So why isn’t he the main suspect?” She pointed at Louis.
“Because he’s the one who figured it out,” Eldridge said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time a killer pretended to solve the crime in their favor.”
“He also has no reason to poison Finn and Kathleen,” I pointed out.
“They were both annoying. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
Louis looked at Eldridge and I as he said, “Let’s go find Marc.” We were about to walk out of the women’s room, when Grace said, “You know, there are restrooms in the big dressing rooms. Someone could have flushed the goop down one of those toilets.”
“Thanks,” I said.
The Zola Emery dressing room was only a few feet away. We stood outside the door, hesitating. There was still a dead body on the other side of the door, after all. Louis took a deep breath, and said, “Let’s get this over with.”
We opened the door, and there was Finn still on the sofa, still without his pants. Amber and Ricky stood on the other side of the room whispering to each other. They stopped abruptly, and Amber asked, “What do you want?”
“We don’t think Finn overdosed. We think he was poisoned,” I said.
I watched her reaction closely. She was guarded, seeming to make quick calculations about how that information fit into her plans. Was she relieved Finn didn’t die of an overdose? It was hard to tell.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because Finn and Kathleen had the same symptoms: vomiting, confusion, disconnecting from reality.”
She smirked, “So you don’t think she actually saw Jesus?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “What she saw was you up on the catwalk trying to make a call. Did you get any bars?”
Ignoring my question, she asked, “What do you think they were poisoned with?”
“The only thing Finn and Kathleen ate or drank was the Juicy Juice I made for them,” Louis said. “They both had a drink made with the special green goop I was provided. We think that’s where the poison was. The goop has disappeared and we’re checking to see if someone flushed it down the toilet.”
“How long have you been in here?” I asked.
“We just came in here a couple of minutes ago,” Amber said. There was a flush in her cheeks. I didn’t ask why they were in there; I was pretty sure I knew, and they didn’t volunteer the information.
Louis went into the bathroom. Eldridge and I followed him. It was another cramped little room. Even if they wanted to, Amber and Ricky couldn’t have followed us. Shoulder to shoulder, the three of us stared into the toilet.
“Look,” Louis said very quietly.
On one side of the bowl was a small green smudge. Louis leaned over, took a piece of toilet paper and wiped up the smudge. He folded it over and put it into his jeans pocket.
“Well, did you find what you were looking for?” Amber asked.
“No,” Louis lied. “Someone could have flushed the goop down but there’s no sign of it.”
“Are you seriously telling me that Finn didn’t overdose?”
“Yes. Finn didn’t overdose,” Louis said.
I could see where she might be confused. I’d found a syringe in her bag. Did she give him a dose of heroin and then he was poisoned by the drink? Is that what happened? Or was there something else going on? And what would that something be?
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Almost four,” Louis said. And that explained why my eyes felt like they were filled with sand.
“So, I’ve got three hours to turn this mess around.”
How she was going to do that, I had no idea. And what exactly did she mean? She wouldn’t be bringing Finn back from the dead. And as long as he was dead it would be a mess.
“Do you think someone poisoned Finn and Kathleen specifically?” she asked.
“They’d have to have known what they were going to drink,” Louis said.
“Wendy has a list,” Ricky said. “She wanted to give me some pineapple drink. I asked for the Banana Blast because it has potassium. Wait… Do you think I’d have been poisoned too if I’d had the drink she wanted me to have?”
“No,” Louis said. “The Pineapple Punch doesn’t have any green goop in it.”
“It does sound like whoever did this had access to the list,” Eldridge said. “That’s how they’d know Finn and Kathleen were having drinks with the green stuff.”
“Not Kathleen,” I said. “She specifically asked for a Green Goddess when she was supposed to have a Blue Moon.”
Louis said, “I had a copy of the list. Wendy emailed it to me at work. I printed it out and brought it, but it disappeared before I had time to make any drinks.”
“Were you the only one to get the email?”
“No. There were CCs. I didn’t pay attention, though, so I don’t remember who got the email. I can print it out when I get to work on Monday, but that doesn’t help right now.”
“So, some people got the list by email. But yours disappeared, so anyone could have taken it from you and figured out who was going to drink what. How long was it before you noticed the list was missing?”
“I made Finn’s drink about a half an hour or so after we got here. The list was already gone.”
“And you’d been running back and forth between the stage and the craft room?”
He nodded. “Anyone could have taken it.”
“None of that is good,” Amber said. “If Finn was murdered, then he should be the only victim. There can’t be an accidental victim or a second victim. That doesn’t make a good story. Wait… Maybe it’s a better story if someone were trying to kill Finn and Kathleen. Someone jealous. Meg knows about plants. Maybe she had a thing for Finn. Maybe she put some poisonous plant into the goop. It would really be helpful if Meg killed them both.”
“Um, Kathleen’s not dead,” I said.
“But she could be. Any minute. Right?”
We just shrugged since we had no idea. It really seemed like Amber was hoping Kathleen would die. I glanced at Louis. We’d both had enough of this. He said, “Let’s go find Marc.”
We stepped out into the hallway. At the far end, we could see that people were gathered outside Kathleen’s dressing room. Before we walked down, Louis said, “I need to wash my hands real quick. I’ll meet you down there.”
It made sense. He had just had his hands in a toilet. He popped into the men’s room, leaving me with Eldridge. As we walked down the hallway, he said quietly, “You didn’t say anything about the syringe you found. Why not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what she’s up to, so it seemed like a good idea to stay quiet.”
Eldridge nodded, like that was a great strategic move—it probably wasn’t. Then he said, “Something was going on there, wasn’t it? Between Amber and Ricky, I mean. Do you think they’re doing it?”
“No,” I said. “Ricky was looking for a phone earlier. Said he wanted to call his girlfriend at two in the morning. I think he was going to call the tabloids about Finn’s overdose.”
“So, you think he was trying to blackmail Amber for more money?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
“What if it’s him? What if he poisoned Finn so he could sell the story to the tabloids?”
“Hmmm… That would be very entrepreneurial, I suppose.”
And then we reached Marc, Keely and Meg outside of Kathleen’s dressing room. The door to the dressing room was shut. I asked, “Do you know what’s going on in there?”
“She’s still alive,” Marc said. “We keep hearing groans.”
“Who’s in there with her?” Eldridge asked.
“The producers and Heston.”
A moment later, Louis joined us.
“Did you tell them?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Tell us what?” Marc wanted to know.
“Their drinks were poisoned. Finn and Kathleen each had a green-based drink. There was something in the green goop.”
“Really?” Meg said. “Oh my God!”
In a low voice, Keely said, “It’s that kid. Heston. He did it.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“You saw his eyes. Finn is obviously his father. I mean, I’d kill Kathleen if she was my mom. And I’d kill Finn for leaving me with her.”
As if to remind us she was still alive, we heard Kathleen moan through the door.
“But he’s just a kid. What is he, fourteen?”
“Kids are scary,” Keely said. “Believe me, I know.”
“Because you’re Black?” Meg asked.
Keely rolled her eyes. “Because I was in a production of The Bad Seed . That’s what got me onto Kapowie! ”
“Oh, sorry.”
“There’s that woman back East who had a bunch of teenage boys kill her husband,” Marc said.
“Oh, they’re making a movie out of that,” Eldridge said.
“They are?” I asked.
“Don’t you read Variety ?”
I didn’t. The subscription was way too expensive.
“It can’t be Heston,” I said. “Kathleen wasn’t supposed to have a green drink. Unless he was trying to kill Finn and only accidentally poisoned his mother.”
“What if she dies?” Meg said, her voice nearly a wail. “And all we’ve done is stand here.”
“We’re trapped in here,” Marc said. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Wait, I think there might be,” I said, then asked Marc, “Do you remember what Donald said when we asked about an emergency?”
“There’s a fire alarm,” he said. “Do you remember where it is?”
I thought back to Marc, Grace, and me going from door to door checking to see if they were all jammed shut. Where was the fire alarm? Was there just one? We started with the door we came through and then worked our way around the building from corner to corner.
“It’s near the door we came in through,” I said.
“Let’s go pull it.”
We were practically there. We opened the door that led to the exit door. There was the fire alarm about five feet up from the floor next to the door. I reached out and pulled the lever.
And nothing happened.