Chapter Ten #3
“Ian Fleming actually created a drink called the Vesper Martini in Casino Royale,” Seth said. “Not all the original ingredients still exist, though. I think the vermouth is a substitute. And yes, shaken not stirred.”
Having at least landed on a reasonable answer for every question in the second category, we moved on to the third.
“Time to roll up our sleeves,” I said. I started by reading the first question: “Odysseus seeks Penelope in the Great Depression. That’s obviously a reference to Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, in which Odysseus spends ten years overcoming obstacles on his way home from the Trojan War. ”
“I think it’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Maureen said.
“Was that the one you wanted to watch with George Clooney?” Mort rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. He’s hot?”
“Just be glad I know it.” Maureen tapped him playfully on the nose.
I read the second question: “The sculptor of Cyprus turns into a well-drawn fish story. The sculptor of Cyprus I think might refer to Pygmalion, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”
“Wasn’t Pygmalion the inspiration for My Fair Lady?” Maureen said.
“But that’s not a well-drawn fish story,” Seth said.
“No, it’s not,” I agreed. “My Fair Lady was adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion.
In Ovid, Pygmalion is a sculptor who is a bit down on women and instead falls in love with a statue he creates out of ivory.
A god brings the statue to life. I think it inspired Shaw in that both the sculptor and Shaw’s linguistic professor subsequently fall in love with their own creations.
But neither have anything to do with fish that I recall. ”
“Eliza Doolittle didn’t sell fish?” Seth asked.
Maureen shook her head. “No, she sold flowers.”
Seth nodded. “Is there a clue in the words ‘well-drawn’?”
“You mean, like animation?” Mort asked.
“Oh!” Maureen banged on the table. “A loved creation that comes to life in an animated movie? Could it be Pinocchio? Wasn’t he swallowed by a fish or something?”
“Technically, I think it was a whale,” Seth said, “but it sounds like it could be right.”
“The sculptor of Cyprus turns into a well-drawn fish story,” I reread. “Seems like it covers all the bases. Are we going with Pinocchio then?” I asked the group, and when everyone nodded, I wrote it down.
Our lengthy deliberations in the final category made us the last to finish, but I was fairly confident in our work as Jenny came around to collect our official answer sheet. I was handing it to her when a commotion erupted from offstage.
Bobby Brandon had marched up to Marty Wardell within spitting distance, as the old idiom suggests, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a stray droplet or two was hitting the producer as Bobby waved a finger at him and shouted, his angry words overpowering any extraneous chatter, “Contract or no contract, I warned you if you didn’t protect me, I’m out of here! ”
I spotted Caceras inching toward them, perhaps to break up a potential physical altercation or maybe just to better hear what was being discussed.
As it turned out, he didn’t need the added proximity.
A hush fell over all the contestants, as if they were as curious as I was, and the raised voices echoed through the studio.
“Security?” Wardell said. “I added extra security.” He started counting a tally on his fingers. “There’s four new guards. Added cameras at the gate and all over. Not to mention the police have been here the whole time. This place is impenetrable.”
“Then explain, if you will,” Bobby spat out, “how a six…foot…rattlesnake”—he paused here for dramatic effect, his eyes boring, if it were possible, into Wardell’s skull—“got into my dressing room!”
Caceras stopped in his tracks and called over a uniformed officer. He whispered something in his ear, his eyes never leaving Bobby and Wardell.
“What?” Wardell said. “That’s not possible.”
“Why don’t you go and have a look for yourself, then,” Bobby said, “if you’re so convinced it’s not possible. It nearly sank its fangs into my arm. I’m lucky I got out with my life.”
Wardell started heading toward the dressing room, but Caceras laid a hand on his upper arm. “I wouldn’t advise it,” he said. “We’ll take care of it. I’ve got an officer stationed at the door so nobody goes in or out, and a trained reptile wrangler is on the way.”
At this point, Marty Wardell suddenly became aware of all the eyes in the studio on him and herded Bobby away to continue their conversation more quietly.
Jenny took the podium and reminded the contestants again that craft services was open and we would be going live at the usual time.
“Wow,” Seth said. “It seems like someone really does want to shut down the show.”
“Or so it would appear,” I said.
“What are you thinking?” Mort asked.
“Not sure yet,” I said. “I just keep coming back to the question that if someone did want to end the show, I can see why they might target Bobby Brandon. It would be difficult to continue a production when its key onscreen face is eliminated. But then why kill Ray first? He may have been good at his job, but he certainly wasn’t indispensable, considering how little time it took them to replace him. ”
“What are you suggesting?” Mort asked. “You think they’re not connected?”
“Now that you mention it,” I said, “it feels more like a diversion than the next step in some serial killer’s reign of terror.”
“You’re forgetting the warning note Bobby received,” Seth said. “ ‘You’re next’ suggests they are connected, and this time it wasn’t just a warning. The attempt on Bobby could have been deadly.”
“I’m not forgetting anything,” I said. “Just trying to keep an open mind.”
“Pardon me, Mrs. F.,” Mort said, “but this isn’t like one of your books. The average killer doesn’t go around creating red herrings.”
“No, I suppose the average killer doesn’t. But how often have you seen one change their MO from a discreet poisoning to a giant fanged reptile?”
He raised a questioning eyebrow but didn’t respond verbally, and we filed off the soundstage to join the rest of the contestants, who had already adjourned to the greenroom.
That Ray’s death had occurred as a result of poison was now common knowledge, as evidenced by the craft services table.
The platter of fresh mouthwatering sandwiches was left completely untouched.
Instead, there was a run on canned soft drinks, bottled water, and bags of chips, and the blond attendant stepped away at one point and returned a few minutes later with a cart loaded with replacements.
Despite the relative warmth of the room compared to the cold studio we’d just left, Julie Clifford stopped at a locker and shrugged into an oversized navy cardigan.
Seth tapped me on the arm. “Come with me to make a house call.” We meandered over to where Curt and Bert sat with their wives. “I must say,” Seth said, “that you both look a little better today.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Bert said. “I’ve sworn off coffee.
” He lifted his Diet Coke. “And only enough caffeine to ward off the nasty withdrawal headache.” He paused, then lowered his voice.
“I’d hate to make a stink out of nothing, but you don’t suppose there was something fishy in the coffee, like what killed the soundman?
Like, if we had drunk more of it, could we be dead too? ”
Seth took in a slow breath. “I would suspect not.” But then he stopped and looked at me, as if he knew that there was really nothing on which to base that opinion.
“I know the police took samples of the coffee,” I said. “If there was anything wrong with it, I’m sure they would have let us know by now.”
Further conversation was interrupted by what I could only assume was the arrival of the reptile wrangler. Two men dressed in camouflage and wearing backpacks carried long poles and a large plastic bin through the room and toward the corridor that held Bobby Brandon’s dressing room.
Caceras came up to join us. “It’s always something exciting around here,” he said.
“Bert was just asking about the coffee,” I said. “I think we’re all a little concerned that we might have been exposed to whatever killed Ray.”
He held up a finger. “Let me set your minds at ease. There was no trace of any toxin in the coffee. Any effects you may have experienced should be resolved by now.”
Bert and his party seemed relieved by that, but when Caceras wandered away, I followed him with Seth in tow.
“No toxin,” I repeated, placing my hand on the lieutenant’s arm.
“Then why would there be such dramatic effects?” Seth asked.
Caceras herded us toward a deserted corner.
“This doesn’t go any further, okay? What I said was true.
There was no toxin in the coffee. I knew the lab would take forever, and since the pathologist had a special interest in this case, I asked her to run the same test on the coffee from craft services that she used on Ray’s stomach contents, and there was no acetonitrile. ”
“Acetonitrile?” I repeated.
“Sorry, that’s the other name for methyl cyanide,” Caceras said.
“But you found something in the coffee,” Seth said.
“Very good, Doctor,” Caceras said. “No getting anything past you.”
“And do you know what that something was?” Seth’s tone suggested his patience was wearing thin.
“Yeah.” Caceras sighed. “Not that it didn’t cost me.
Had to pony up my Chargers tickets the next time Denver comes to town.
Seems like our ME is a die-hard Broncos fan.
Go figure. But with that incentive and a little midnight oil, we learned that someone took it upon themselves to lace the grounds with a prescription medication. ”
“Which one?” Seth pressed, his voice more agitated.
Caceras sniffed. “We narrowed it down to one of the medications prescribed for ADHD.”
“Those are all stimulants,” Seth said. “They’re contraindicated for anyone with a heart condition. No wonder everyone was so jumpy those first couple of days. Whoever pulled a stunt like that is lucky nobody else died.”
“Unless that was their intent,” I said.
“Oh, don’t do that to me, Jessica,” Caceras said.
My mind didn’t want to go there either. A mass murder was not what our little trivia team had signed up for.
The reptile wranglers returned. The plastic bin they carried between them seemed much heavier than when they’d arrived, and the contestants gave them a wide berth as the two men made their way over to the lieutenant.
“Did you get the rattler?” Caceras asked.
“Yes and no,” one of the men said. “You wanna see it?” After setting the bin on the floor, he reached for the lid.
“Uh, no thank you,” Caceras said.
“What did you mean by ‘yes and no’?” I asked.
Caceras nodded, as if giving the wrangler permission to respond.
“I mean we caught the snake,” the man said, “but it ain’t no rattler. This here’s a bull snake. Also called a gopher snake, because it’s no threat to anyone unless you’re a small mammal.”
“Where might someone get a snake like that?” Caceras pulled out his notebook.
“Just about anywhere,” the wrangler said. “They’re indigenous to California and make pretty good pets.”
“So it’s legal to own them?” I asked.
“Yeah,” the wrangler answered. “I’m sure we can find someone out there who’d love to have this guy as a pet, unless you all need him for evidence or something. Illegal to release them back into the wild, for some reason.”
Bobby Brandon came rushing over. “Did I hear right? You got him?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said. “You wanna see him?” he asked again, as if determined to show off his catch.
“I’ve seen him,” Bobby said. “Keep that deadly thing away from me.”
“Ain’t nothing deadly about him,” the man said. “He’s just a harmless gopher snake. Pretty fellow. Here.” He reached for the lid, but Caceras put his foot down, literally, on the box top, preventing him.
“I don’t know.” Bobby stepped backward. “I remember reading about gopher snakes. Something about their bite being deadly eventually.”
“Everyone who gets bit by one will die eventually?” Seth repeated.
“Something like that,” Bobby said.
Seth tried to hide a smile. “Ayuh. We had an old joke like that in medical school. Everyone who gets malaria will die eventually. Everyone who breaks a leg will die eventually. Everyone who gets a paper cut will die eventually. Because everyone dies eventually. We each promised to use it on a patient we disliked, but I don’t think a one of us did. ”
“Well, I don’t think it’s funny.” Bobby glared at Seth before turning back to Caceras. “Does that mean I can use my dressing room now, if this was all someone’s idea of a joke?”
“Let’s hold off on that,” Caceras said. “Even if the snake wasn’t as deadly as it first appeared, it seems like someone was intent on frightening you. We’d like to process the room for prints. Shouldn’t take too long.”
“I need my jacket and tie for the live portion,” he said. “I hung them on the back of my door before I saw that thing.”
“I’ll bring them to you personally,” Caceras said.
Mollified, Bobby walked off and Caceras rolled his eyes. “How many days left this week?”
“After today,” I said, “only two.”
“I’d better go check on that dressing room. Clock’s ticking.”