Chapter Eleven #2
“I don’t know if it’s still true,” Howard said, “but I was reading a book about the game show scandals of the 1950s. It was a big deal.”
Mort pulled his cell phone from the compartment where he had stowed it before entering the studio and started typing. “A New York grand jury deliberated but didn’t press charges. Congress didn’t prohibit the fixing of game shows until 1960, when they amended the Communications Act of 1934.”
“So it’s illegal now,” Maureen said.
“But I’m still not sure under whose jurisdiction that would fall.” Mort continued to scroll through screens. Then suddenly he sat up straighter, laughed, and shoved his phone back into his pocket.
“Figure something out?” Seth asked.
“Just remembered that I’m on vacation, and it’s not my problem.”
“How can you say that?” asked Maureen. “We can’t compete against a team that has all the answers. I think it’s all our problem if another team is cheating and the police aren’t doing anything about it.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Lieutenant Caceras may have put the paper back, but if I know that man, he did it for a reason and is working some kind of angle. So why don’t we have a nice meal and wait to see what he has to say when he stops by tonight?”
“Here we are,” Howard announced. “Fletcher Drive. Named after a developer from back in the early 1900s, apparently no relation.”
“We’ll have to get a picture in front of a street sign before we leave,” Maureen said, forcing a smile.
Howard pulled into the parking lot of the Astro Family Restaurant, a dramatic, space-age-inspired building with steep angular rooflines that screamed mid-century architecture.
“Looks like something out of The Jetsons,” Maureen said.
“I know. Isn’t it great?” Howard said. “It was recently named an official historic LA landmark. Oh, look. A parking space. I think I can get the limo in there.”
Howard maneuvered the long vehicle into the spot, and we all climbed out. While the outside of the building was futuristic, the inside was a classic diner, with a long serving counter and attached stools, and leatherette booths everywhere.
A hostess led us past a glass display case of decadent desserts into a back room, where we took turns sliding into an oversized booth. The menu, also covered in a brown leatherette, proved extensive, and I found my stomach rumbling at all the homey choices.
“I don’t know why you bother looking at the whole menu, Jess,” Seth teased. “You and I both know you’re just going to order a salad.”
I closed my menu and beamed at him. “I just might surprise you, then.”
“So, Howard,” Mort said, “tell us about this place.”
“And why does it look familiar?” Maureen asked.
“Probably because the inside looks like any diner in America,” Howard said, “and it’s been used as a location so many times that they gave this place its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”
“No fooling,” Mort said.
“Six Feet Under, Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men…” Howard counted on his fingers as he listed them off. “And more that will come to me. I’m going to have to study it. Oh, and Bosch.”
“Is Bosch the iconic detective that brought us here?” Mort asked.
“I can see where you might think so, but I actually had someone else in mind. He sat at a booth near the front. One of his companions was eating a hot dog…” He wiggled his eyebrows as if he’d given us a foolproof hint.
The rest of us looked at each other, clueless.
“Going to need more than that to go on,” Mort said.
“Without the bun.” Howard sat back expectantly, but the rest of us looked blankly at each other.
“Because he was a kid?” Howard said. When we still had no guess, he blew out an exasperated breath. “Monk! It was the episode called ‘Mr. Monk and the Kid.’ ”
“Oh, of course!” Maureen said. “I love Monk!”
“Because he’s hot?” Seth teased.
Maureen gave him a look.
“Because he’s funny,” Mort said.
“It’s a comedy?” Seth looked confused.
“Well,” Maureen said, “sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
I leaned forward. “Adrian Monk struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, among other issues.”
“That doesn’t seem funny,” Seth said. “Mental illness is nothing to laugh at.”
“Trust me,” I started, “the audience is rooting for him to succeed despite his obstacles, not laughing at him because of them. The thrust of the show is that the attention to detail that comes with his OCD often helps him in his detective work. He observes tiny clues that no one else even notices—”
“I’m surprised you’re familiar with it,” Seth said, “with as little television as you watch.”
“The mystery writing community is small. I sat on a panel with the author of many of the Monk books at Bouchercon, and I was curious. It’s easy to get hooked.”
The waitress came and we ordered. I surprised Seth by choosing the pasta primavera.
“Sneaky, Jess,” he said, “but it’s about as close as you can get to a salad without it actually being a salad.” He ordered the steak and eggs plate with a side of hotcakes.
“I may be the only woman in America whose doctor grumbles when I choose healthy meals.”
My tablemates chuckled, and we handed our menus back to the waitress.
“Are we going to play the game?” Maureen asked.
“What game?” Mort said.
“The game where we try to figure out if we can learn anything from our television detective’s methods,” she said.
“I’d hardly call it a game,” Seth said. “After all, a man has died.”
“I think Maureen meant to suggest it as a mental exercise,” I said. “And we have been doing the same thing with the other detectives on our culinary mystery tour.”
“Fair enough,” Mort said. “So, what minor detail have we missed that Monk would have seen and used to blow this whole case wide open?”
“Jessica discovered the cheating by noticing a woman putting on a sweater,” Maureen said loyally. “I think we all saw her do it, but Jess was the only one who really noticed.”
I could feel the heat hit my face, and I took a sip of my water. “I have to admit something: I may have only noticed because I’m fairly certain I saw that sweater before.”
“Saw her wearing it earlier, you mean?” Mort said.
I shook my head.
“Well, woman,” Seth said, “don’t keep us in suspense.”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it looked like the sweater Sandi Flores was wearing when I talked to her in the ladies’ room this morning.”
“The writer?” Maureen asked. “Oh, that would make sense. She’d have access to the answers because she helped write the questions.”
“I can’t prove it though,” I said. “Lots of people shop at the same stores and buy similar clothing.”
“I would still mention it to Caceras,” Mort said.
“I plan to,” I said. “I wonder if that new security camera by the gate might shed more light on it.”
“Good thought,” Mort said. “Notice any other minute details with that Monk-like brain of yours?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again and exhaled.
“Ah, there is something.” Mort leaned his elbows against the table. “Spill.”
“It’s not a clue I spotted. It’s the incongruities and messiness of what’s happened so far that bother me. If I had written a killer as inconsistent as this one seems to be, my editor would have sent the manuscript right back.”
“What do you mean?” Seth said.
“Well, if we set up a timeline—”
“Wait,” Mort said. “Let’s do that.” He turned to Maureen. “Do you have anything to write with?”
Maureen rummaged through her purse and came up with a pen and a photocopy of a map of Europe.
Mort flipped it over to the blank side. “First on the timeline would have to be the doctoring of the coffee, right? It would explain why some of us felt so jumpy, even on orientation day.”
“Right,” I said. “All the crew and contestants drank from the craft services table. And everybody, even Jenny, has been less abrasive since a different coffee was brought in. But why ADHD meds? And why in a way that targeted everyone?”
“Maybe it’s something the killer already had on hand,” Seth mused.
“But was he or she trying to kill at that point, or simply trying to stop the show?” I asked.
Howard laughed. “If that’s what they were going for, it backfired.”
“How’s that?” Mort asked.
“I’m sure the conflict on that first day helped rather than hurt ratings,” Howard replied.
“Like I said before, ADHD meds are contraindicated in most cardiac patients,” Seth said. “What if it was put in the coffee in an attempt to kill one particular person?”
“Ray, you mean?” I asked.
“Just a possibility, since we’re brainstorming here,” Seth said thoughtfully. “But honestly, it didn’t have that much chance of succeeding, since Ray had been losing weight and his cardiovascular health must have been improving.”
I tapped my fingers on the tabletop. “If it were a sloppy attempt to kill Ray, how does that connect to the next thing on the timeline, which is Ray’s death?”
Mort scribbled it onto the paper. “I see what you’re saying about the incongruity. The stimulants in everybody’s coffee seems sloppy and indirect, but the methyl cyanide only in Ray’s coffee is much more calculated.” Mort shrugged. “Newbie killer? Maybe they just needed time to figure it out.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “The next thing would be the threatening note that Bobby Brandon received.”
“You’re next,” Howard said melodramatically, followed by an evil laugh.
“Exactly.” I pointed a finger at him. “It’s a cliché, a stock villain move.
And it brings us back to motive. If the motive to doctor the coffee was to try to shut down the show, why kill Ray?
It seems too drastic—and ineffective. They must have known a replacement soundman was one phone call away.
And if the motive all along was to kill Ray, why follow that up by threatening Bobby Brandon? ”
Mort sank back into the booth and studied the paper as the waitress brought our beverages.
When she left, he tapped the paper with the end of the pen.
“One thing we don’t have on this timeline is when and how Julie Clifford hooked up with Sandi Flores and arranged the transfer of answers, assuming that’s where she got them. ”
I pulled apart the foil wrapper containing my tea bag, placed the bag in my cup, and poured boiling water from the small metal pot provided. “As best as I can work out,” I said, “it likely occurred before the first day of the competition. It explains their odd team dynamics.”
“So,” Maureen said, “orientation day?”
“Or maybe even before that,” I said.
“It’s beginning to sound like a conspiracy,” Seth observed. “Like that Hercule Poirot mystery where a whole group conspires to commit a murder, so the evidence doesn’t point to one specific person.”
“Oh, don’t mention the title,” I warned him. “I wouldn’t want to spoil it if someone here hasn’t read it.”
Maureen chuckled. “That happened in Monk, too.”
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” I said, reminded of what my agent had told me when I informed him that one of my more cleverly twisted plots had been borrowed, uncredited, in a television show.
“But I wasn’t suggesting an organized conspiracy as much as I was multiple perpetrators working alone. Different methods. Different motives.”
“You might be right.” Mort stared at the page in front of him.
“If we add the next thing on the timeline, the clumsy attempt to either kill or scare Bobby Brandon with the snake, we could banter around motives all day, but none of them fit everything that happened. That’s a stumper.
” He folded up the page and stuck it in his shirt pocket, along with the pen.
“Glad I’m on vacation.” He smiled at the waitress as she set a plate containing an open-faced roast beef sandwich and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy in front of him.
Conversation waned as we dug into our meals.
I caught Seth staring at a forkful of hotcakes. “Something wrong with your meal, Seth?”
“Oh, no,” he said “They’re fine. Just feels like something’s missing.”
“You’re probably just missing those Maine blueberries that Mara uses,” I said.
“That could be,” he said. “Or…” He raised his hand to get the waitress’s attention, and she brought him several pats of butter, which he spread over his hotcakes before taking a bite. “Ayuh. That’s what was missing.”
I shook my head and went back to my meal.
By the time we’d finished, most of our plates were empty. I’d eaten all the vegetables, and the few noodles left on my plate weren’t enough to bother taking back to the house.
The waitress returned with her pad. “What can I get you folks for dessert?” she asked. “And before you say you don’t have room, that nice couple at that table over there already paid for it. Said they saw you on a game show. Is that right?”
I looked over toward the booth where a man and woman had turned to watch our reactions. They waved, and we waved back.
I was too full to eat another bite, so I ordered a slice of pie in a to-go container, which may have inspired my dinner companions to do the same. When the waitress went to fetch our goodies, I turned to my tablemates. “I’d like to go over and thank them.”
“I’ll go with you,” Mort said.
The couple were all smiles as we approached.
“Thank you so much for the thoughtful gesture,” I said.
“Oh, our pleasure,” the wife said. “We recognized you as soon as we came in. We only turned on the show because there really wasn’t much else on, but I have to say, we’re totally hooked now.”
“Any hints as to who will win?” the husband asked.
“Oh, we don’t know,” I said. “It’s live, remember.”
“Those Sagebrush Sages are going to be tough to beat,” the wife said.
“But our money is on you,” the husband added.