Chapter Ten
We were midway through watching the video of the various teams when Ginette brought in a tray containing sandwiches and individual cups of soup and set it at the bar for us.
“Intermission,” Howard called, and switched on the lights. His face lit up when Victoria entered. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her tight, and gave her an amorous kiss.
Moments later, with no sign of their embrace ending, I turned to Danielle, who looked as if she were ready to doze off. “I hope we’re not boring you with all this.” I pointed back to the screen.
“Nonsense,” she said. “Already, it has more juicy conflict than my third film. Boy, was that a stinker. I take it you’re looking for evidence about who killed that soundman.”
“Or listening for it,” I said. “We thought maybe we could learn something from one of the microphones that wasn’t switched on during the live broadcast. Maybe something that Ray overheard that he wasn’t meant to.”
“Someone icing a potential stool pigeon, eh?” she said, falling back into the slang favored in her old noir films.
I laughed. “Well, maybe not in so many words, but it’s a theory, anyway.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve made any headway on the mystery here at the house.”
“I’ve heard a few noises,” I said. “I went to check on an unusual sound last night and found all the lights were on in an empty guest room.”
She nodded. “Hear any voices?”
I shook my head.
“My hearing’s not as good as it used to be,” she said, “but there are times I hear whispers. And more than once a child crying. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how we acquired a child spirit. No child ever died here. Unless it was before I had the house built.”
Mort turned to her. “And you’re sure it wasn’t someone else in the house talking? Or maybe watching television?”
“Not sure of anything.” She sat up a little straighter, and a tinge of haughtiness entered the timbre of her voice. “That was why I was glad you were here.” She narrowed her focus on Mort. “So, Sheriff, what have you discovered, hmm?”
Maureen hid a chuckle, and I got up to help myself to a couple of quarters of egg salad sandwich and what turned out to be a delightful cup of butternut squash soup.
When the video resumed, we were listening to the deliberations of the Sagebrush Sages, not that there was any.
Question after question, the scribe for that team, that diminutive pixie-haired blonde, either answered the question or waited for a teammate to answer, then said she agreed.
There was no team debate at all. On the rare occasion a teammate answered incorrectly, she asked for other suggestions, then either accepted the correct one or supplied the correct answer herself.
I asked Mateo to pause again after their team deliberation was finished.
“You’re right, Jess,” Seth said. “That is odd.”
“Do we know anything about her?” I asked.
“The player names are on their audio feeds,” Mateo said. “You want me to search?”
“Please,” I said.
And the screen went live with a Google search of the contestant’s name: Julie Clifford.
“It’s a pretty common name,” Mateo said, after the exploits of various and sundry Julie Cliffords from around the globe popped up on the screen. “Maybe if I tweak it a bit…then hit the news tab…”
The first entry in Mateo’s refined search attempt was a news article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and it revealed that Julie Clifford had been a semifinalist in the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament a decade earlier.
“Well, look at that,” Mort said. “Another ringer.”
“There was nothing in the rules saying a contestant couldn’t have participated in another trivia show,” I observed, still looking down the list of hits on her name. “What’s that fifth story there?”
I followed the motion of the arrow on the screen as Mateo clicked on it, then I read the short news story that involved Julie Clifford as the principal investor in a dodgy start-up company that went belly-up, leaving her filing for bankruptcy.
“Seems like she could use the money,” Seth said.
“There’s no crime in needing money,” I said. “Nor in having been on another game show previously. The thing that still really bothers me is their team dynamic. There’s no debate.”
“Maybe they all think she’s so brilliant they’re not going to fight her,” Maureen said. “Frankly, a few times early on, when you or Seth had an answer, I was a little reluctant to disagree.”
I leaned over to lay my hand on hers. “Please don’t do that. You know you’re a valuable member of this team.”
“Oh, I know that now,” she said, “especially since I learned that neither of you watch enough television or listen to music written in this century.”
The rest of the viewing was fairly uneventful.
Howard offered to drive Mateo home in the limo, while the rest of us climbed the stairs to get some sleep.
As I sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing lotion into the skin of my hands, I thought about Ray and the woman he’d had a short but anger-generating discussion with.
Who was she? What were they talking about, and could she have a motive to kill him?
But as I snuggled under the covers, reading my book, I thought of the mansion Flavia lived in, which brought me back to Danielle’s overheard voices, and I couldn’t think of which was sadder, that an old woman was imagining things, or that the walls of this house had never heard the voice of a child.
* * *
Hair and makeup went faster on Day Three, probably because there was, once again, one fewer team.
Lee Ann Carroll, the principal makeup artist, gave me a quick once-over, then pointed out a broken nail that I hadn’t noticed.
“You’re a scribe, right? We’d better fix that.
If the camera zooms in on your hands, it might show. ”
She turned to her nail kit, pulled out a bottle, then asked, “Real or acrylic extensions?”
“Oh, they’re real enough,” I said.
“Fabulous. Some of those fake nails can be hard to get off. Need a special remover.”
She removed the polish from my nail, trimmed and buffed it, then matched the shade perfectly from her selection.
“Thank you,” I said, admiring her work.
Although my teammates and the other contestants were still mostly milling around the locker area or craft service table, I headed toward the soundstage to look around. I was hoping to spot the writer that Ray had had a short spat with on the video, but she wasn’t in her seat.
I turned back and spied her entering the ladies’ room off the hallway. After a moment’s hesitation, I followed her in.
This space wasn’t as large as the expansive ladies’ room adjacent to the greenroom for the contestants, just a small anteroom that opened to an area with two sinks and a couple of stalls.
While she was occupied in a stall, I passed a small sofa, turned to a sink, and let the water run.
I almost forgot about the recent polish and stopped myself from washing my hands just in time.
Instead, I stood at the mirror pretending to tuck in a stray strand of hair when she came out and approached the adjacent sink.
“Hi!” I smiled into the mirror at the bespectacled brunette. I read her backward name tag, barely visible under a chunky blue cardigan sweater, as Sandi. “You’re one of the writers, right?”
“That’s right.” She returned my smile, but it never reached her eyes, and I thought I caught a bit of a tremble in her hand as she reached to turn off the tap. “Um, there’s a reason they gave the contestants their own bathroom. I don’t think they want us getting chummy.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of asking you anything about the questions!
I just…I happened to catch you talking with Ray the other day”—I neglected to say that I’d only seen it on video the night before—“and I wanted to offer my condolences. Such a sad thing, and it must be such a shock to the crew. Were you two close?”
She grasped the edge of the sink in front of her, her knuckles nearly as white as the porcelain, and swayed briefly, her eyes closed.
“Here.” I glanced back at the small sofa. “Why don’t you sit down a minute. You look a little unsteady.”
I followed her and sat down. I thought of offering her a tissue, but there were no tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wanted to express my sympathy and here I am upsetting you.” I feigned a sigh.
“If it helps, I’ve been told I’m a good listener.
” Then I gave her my most compassionate look, one that Mort once called puppy dog eyes, and waited for her to speak.
Eventually she relaxed her hands, which had been balled into fists, and shook her head. “I don’t know what to feel. Were we close? Maybe once.”
This time a tear did fall, and I handed her that tissue.
“Thanks, that’s the only tear I’ve managed to shed since he died. How horrible is that?” She looked up at me. “And to answer your question, Ray and I were married once, but it ended a long time ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Acrimonious divorce?”
“I think we both agreed on the divorce. We’d grown so distant by that time, there wasn’t anything really holding us together. It was the settlement that proved…acrimonious.”
I just raised an eyebrow.
“Thing is, at that time, I was doing a bit of freelance work, and Ray took on a lot of odd jobs, mostly DJing and stuff, under the table. He got to be quite popular with a certain crowd, but I think that only made it worse for him.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” I said.
“His DJ name was the Fat Man. Ray “the Fat Man” Flores, and no, he didn’t choose it himself.
People kept calling, looking to book the Fat Man for their parties, so he pretended he was okay with that, entertained the crowds with a lot of self-deprecating humor, made it part of his stage persona.
He was this big, jolly dude who liked to party, didn’t take himself too seriously, and people responded to that.