Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
My first inclination was to scream. Why was Louis doing this to me? It had been a horrible night and public humiliation wasn’t going to make it any better. As people came into the stage area and spread out, I realized the only way to get through this would be to actually solve the poisonings. But how was I going to do that?
Ed leaned uncomfortably on the Guessmate? desk, while Donald and Wendy sat in the chairs behind it. Marc was with Grace, Keely and Meg in the front row of the risers. Eldridge and Louis stayed close to the craft table, while Ricky and Amber floated around trying to avoid each other. Kathleen and Heston came out of their dressing room and took a spot at the far end. He’d brought out a chair for his mother to sit on. In one hand she held a can of 7-Up that she occasionally sipped, and in her lap was a waste basket in case she needed to vomit again. Lovely thought.
Setting my smoothie down, I took a spot between the risers and the front of the Guessmate? set. As I did, I realized I was at the very end of a 1970s murder mystery. Louis had just cast me as the brilliant inspector. I might never forgive him.
In a shaky voice, I said, “All right. We’re going to take this very slowly.” Mainly because I had no idea what I was going to say.
“I’m sorry, what’s happening?” Donald asked. “Why is Niles talking?”
“ Noah is going to tell us who poisoned Finn and Kathleen,” Louis said. “He’s really very good at this.”
“This isn’t a party game, someone died,” Wendy said.
“I’m not going to sit here—” Donald said.
“Where else are you going to be? Are you going to leave? We’d all like to leave,” Louis said. “And we could if you hadn’t had the guard jam the doors!”
“Donald, maybe you should just shut up for once,” Wendy said. Then she looked at me and said dryly, without confidence, “All right, go ahead. Tell us who killed Finn.”
“Okay. I will,” I swallowed hard before I began. “First, let’s think about motive. Four of us didn’t know the victims until tonight. Me, Louis, Eldridge and Ed.”
“You could be deranged fans,” Donald said.
“True. But how would we have even known about the taping? It wasn’t publicized anywhere.”
“But…”
“And how would we, as deranged fans, get ourselves invited in the first place?”
“Well…”
“As I was saying, four of us have no motive. Now, let’s look at the cast. The person with the strongest motive in the cast is probably Kathleen.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. What are you talking about?” She said, her voice quivering.
“You had a motive, Kathleen, your son?—”
And then I stopped. Oh God. Did I want to be the one to tell Heston his dad had died a few hours ago? The silence hung over me like a pendulum out of a Vincent Price movie. Then, Heston said, “It’s okay. I know Finn was my birth father. And I know Grace is my real mom.”
“Oh!” Grace peeped. “You know? I had no idea...”
“I found the adoption papers in Kathleen’s desk a while back. I’m not very well supervised.”
“That is not true,” Kathleen said. “Heston is loved and well taken care of. We almost always know where he is. And what you’re saying is absurd. I have no motive whatsoever.”
“Keeping Heston from finding out who his birth parents are would be a motive.”
“Yes, but he already knew.”
“But you didn’t know he knew. You’re just finding that out now.”
“You’re forgetting I was poisoned too!”
“You could have poisoned yourself just enough to make you sick to keep anyone from suspecting you.”
“Suspecting me? Me? But I am a good Christ?—”
“Yeah. Whatever. The bigger problem with this theory is that you went into your dressing room as soon as we got here and, as nearly as I can tell, you didn’t come out until after Finn had drunk his first Juicy Juice. Did anyone see her come out?”
They all just looked at me. No one had.
“Heston?”
“We were in there the whole time.” He sounded a little disappointed, as though he’d have been happy his mother was the poisoner.
“So she couldn’t have put the poison into the drink mix. Neither of you could.”
“Unless they’re both lying,” Donald said.
“Did anyone see them out of their dressing room during that time?”
No one said anything. I moved on.
“Grace had a motive. Finn got you pregnant and then Kathleen practically bought your child.”
“How dare you?—”
Kathleen’s outrage was getting tiresome.
“I would never have gone that far…” Grace said. “It’s unfair.”
“She was with me, though,” Marc said. “In the dressing room. She couldn’t have poisoned the drinks either.”
“And we were together, too,” Keely said. “Neither Meg or I could have done it.”
“You’re right. Though you both had motives.”
“Not strong motives,” Meg said. “Not ones that would fester for fifteen years.”
“I’ll concede that. And then there’s Ricky,” I said. “You were blackmailing Finn. Had he decided not to pay you anymore?”
“Hold on,” he said. Pointing at Meg and Keely he said, “Those two know about poison plants. And we all got an email about who was having which drink. They could have mushed up some poison plants beforehand to bring with them.”
“But no one saw them near the craft room.”
“No… But if they were in it together?—”
“You seem very interested in deflecting the blame.”
“I’m just pointing out you might not be as smart as you think you are,” he said.
And he was probably right there. I probably wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. But I had no choice but to continue.
“You can relax. I don’t think you did it. Even if you only intended to make Finn sick as a threat, I don’t think you’d have taken the chance of killing your golden goose. Sure, now you’re attempting to blackmail his estate, but how long will that last? Once the secrets are out there you have no leverage.”
He got an unhappy look on his face that told me he hadn’t thought it all the way through. He hadn’t realized his gravy train was going to end.
I paused. I was almost through everyone in the room and I still hadn’t identified a killer. “That brings us to Amber. You did actually kill Finn.”
“That was a mistake. I thought he’d taken heroin. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was trying to save him!”
“Yeah… I think it’s still considered negligent homicide.”
“Homicide? No, no, no. A mistake... I had good intentions.”
“Okay. Maybe they’ll go with involuntary manslaughter. Provided they can’t also connect you to the poison.”
“What? No…”
“You seem prepared to make the most of Finn’s death. In fact, too prepared.”
“He was a drug addict. Of course I thought about what might come afterward. Of course I was prepared for that. And you’re wrong. Nothing’s going to happen to me. I made a mistake. I thought he’d taken an overdose. I was trying to save him.”
“I believe you,” I said. Which didn’t mean she wasn’t in a lot of trouble, but it seemed best not to rub that in. Then I said, “Which brings us to Donald and Wendy.”
“Neither of us have a motive,” Donald said.
“You both have a motive. You don’t want to be in the juice business and your wife doesn’t want to be in show business.”
“I would never—” Wendy began. Then she turned to her husband and said, “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t. Don’t listen to a word that this, this… person says.”
“I didn’t say you did it. I said, you both have a motive. The thing is, poisoning Finn and later Kathleen would not get either of you what you want.”
“You’ve run out of people,” Donald said. “Are you saying none of us did it?”
I decided to ignore that because he was right; I had run out of people. And he was wrong; I did think one of them did it.
“We know for certain Finn and Kathleen were each poisoned with a juice drink by someone in this room.” I let that sink in for just a moment. “Each of them had a drink with the green mix as an ingredient. The remaining green mix has disappeared—which is how I know it has to be someone here. The green mix was made at the Juicy Juice in North Hollywood and picked up by Louis in the afternoon. There are three possibilities: It might have been poisoned at the store; while it was in Louis’ possession; or while it was in the craft room. All we know for certain is that when Finn drank it at around eleven thirty it had already been poisoned.”
I took a long, dramatic pause. I didn’t intend for it to be dramatic. I simply needed time to figure out what I wanted to say next.
“We also know that a large amount of Wendy’s medicine has gone missing. Someone removed it from her bag and returned it to Donald’s. Wendy noticed the medicine was missing around midnight.”
“That’s right,” Wendy said.
“But if it was used as poison, then it had to be taken from your bag before eleven-thirty.”
Something began to fall into place for me. Something I’d been trying to understand for a while.
“Or… well before eleven-thirty. Louis didn’t notice anything odd about the mix. That means the pills must have been dissolved and mixed in. There had to be enough time to do that. Louis picked the cooler of fruit up yesterday afternoon. It’s possible the green goo—um, the proprietary mix was already poisoned.”
“That’s not… No,” Wendy said, “that didn’t happen.”
“It could have been done here in a few minutes in one of the restrooms, I suppose. And then whoever it was must have looked for a chance to slip into the craft room and mix it into the green goop. But it doesn’t seem likely. Someone would have seen them. Wendy, who knows you take digitoxin?”
“My doctor, of course.”
“Of the people here. Who knows?”
“You and Meg…”
“Who knew before eleven-thirty?”
“Donald, of course…”
“Okay, I thought we’ve already decided I’m innocent,” he said impatiently.
“Well… anyone could have looked in my bag,” Wendy said.
“Do you always carry the medication with you?”
“I have been. Yes. I keep forgetting to take the damn things. It’s better if they’re always with me. It’s the only way I might remember.”
“So you had your bag with you when you went to your store yesterday afternoon.”
Wendy fidgeted anxiously. “Hold on. You said yourself poisoning them wouldn’t get me what I wanted.”
“It wouldn’t have. But it would get Wes Lange what he wants.”
“What?”
Actually, several people said, “What?” I’d surprised them. To be honest, I’d surprised myself.
“No…” Ricky said. “He’s dead. I told you.”
“You told us Finn said he ‘took care of’ Wes. Sending him to prison would take care of him. Fifteen years in prison is a good reason to hold a grudge.”
“Wes isn’t here,” Donald said. “How could he kill Finn if he’s not even here.”
“He is here, though. He’s right there.” I pointed at Ed, who wasn’t Ed. “One of you said there was a rumor Wes went to prison. He has a prison tattoo next to his thumb. He said he’d been learning carpentry. That’s the kind of thing they teach you in prison.”
“He doesn’t look anything like Wes,” Ricky said.
“And you don’t look the way you did fifteen years ago, do you?”
Turning to Ed, I said, “You were the one who got the cooler of fruit ready, weren’t you? And you knew about Wendy’s medical condition. You also had the list of who was supposed to drink what so that you’d assemble enough fruit. How long have you been waiting for an opportunity like this?”
He stood there for a few moments looking like he might make a run for it… but there was nowhere to run. Very quietly, he said, “Fifteen years. Fifteen years I’ve been planning this. Waiting for payback.”
“Weird things have been happening since we got here,” I said. “Marc’s cigarette case, Meg’s troll doll, Grace’s photograph… That was you, wasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“You wrote cocksucker on my mirror?” Ricky said.
Now Ed smiled and said, “I did.”
“Fuck you.”
“You were outside my house filming me,” Kathleen said, assuming that he was responsible for the videotape of her and Finn.
He said , “Yeah… I, uh, did that.”
“You monster!”
Of course, I knew he hadn’t done any such thing. I knew it was actually Heston who’d made the video. But Ed kept his mouth shut and took the blame. The boy looked sheepish. I think he knew he should tell the truth, but he also knew that his mother wasn’t someone you told the truth to.
“What about me?” Keely said. “You didn’t leave anything for me.”
“The flowers,” he said. “I’m the one who ordered the flowers. It was easy to get on Wendy’s email. And I left the money in an envelope at your shop. I knew you did beautiful work.”
“I knew something was funny about that. Actually getting paid, I mean. That was the tip-off. Thank you.”
I suppose it was kind of him, but it was also… He’d made sure there was foxglove in the display. He must have known…
“You thought you’d get away with this,” I said.
“I didn’t think anyone would die.”
Donald walked up close to him and looked him over. “Are you sure you’re Wes Lange? You really don’t look at all like him.”
“My face is a little different. I got beat up a few times in prison.”
“Oh.” Donald backed up.
“Is Ed your real name?” I asked. He’d have had to give Donald and Wendy documents to get the job.
“Yeah. Ed Urbanski. When I applied for the job six months ago, I didn’t think they’d remember. And they didn’t. They never had much to do with the money.”
“Wes, tell us what happened,” Grace said. “How did you end up in prison?”
“Finn wanted some coke for the wrap party. I drove him down to Compton so he could make the deal. He went into this house, came out, and put a gym bag in my trunk. I didn’t think anything about it. Then before we got to the freeway, we were pulled over. He’d put twenty kilos of cocaine into my trunk. He was doing favors for the dealers so he didn’t have to pay for his coke. He’d said something about running an errand before the party. I think he was delivering the drugs for them. When I met with an attorney, he said the only way to get out of it was to turn in the people from the house, but I didn’t know anything about them. Finn did. That’s when I found out Finn had already made a deal. He’d told the cops I was the one with the connection. That I’d asked him to go into the house to cover my ass. That he didn’t know anything, and that I was the one who knew it all. Except I didn’t know anything.”
Then he turned to Donald, and said, “And it was all your fault.”
“Wes, we only tried to help you.”
“You helped me into prison. For fifteen years.”
“We got you an attorney.”
“After you got one for Finn. You knew his attorney was going to blame everything on me. You knew the drugs weren’t mine, you knew they were Finn’s. You only got me an attorney so you wouldn’t look bad.”
“I was trying to protect the show. It was better?—”
“The show was over.”
“I didn’t know that, though. Finn promised to stay with the show. He promised he’d do another season after Young Leonardo wrapped. That would have turned us into a huge hit. I couldn’t let him go to prison for drugs.”
“But I could. You didn’t care that I was innocent.”
Weakly, Donald said, “That’s not true.” It was clear that it was though.
There was no point in continuing, Donald would never admit he’d done anything wrong. I asked Ed, “Why trap us in here? Was that necessary?”
“I didn’t… I didn’t know that Donald was going to have the doors jammed. I thought Finn would drink the poison and we’d call an ambulance. The medicine bottle was in Donald’s camera bag, I thought he’d get blamed. That’s what I’d planned.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “Trapped in here, unable to communicate with the outside world. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“ I cut the phone line,” Amber admitted.
“You?”
“Finn was nervous about tonight. About facing Kathleen. That kind of thing is always a risk for an addict. He didn’t bring his mobile phone because he was afraid of calling a dealer. That’s why I had the adrenaline with me. That’s why I cut the phone line right after we got here.”
“And the fire alarm?”
“That was me,” Ed said. “After Finn died, I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted time to think.” Then he added, “The key to the elephant door is on a hook next to the lever. If we’d been in danger?—”
And that’s when I remembered him telling us the guard had the key. Why had we trusted him? He was a complete stranger.
And then we heard the door open, and Alan called out… “Okay, time to go home.”