Chapter Ten #2
“Financially, it was a win. We got by, which isn’t all that easy to do in this town, and saved up what we could.
It helped that we were able to live in this dinky old house that my aunt had left me.
Ray put in the sweat equity to fix it up.
Leveled the foundation, fixed the leaky plumbing, rewired the whole house.
It was his pride and joy. He even raised the roof, turned a small attic into a sound studio.
“That’s where I lost him, I think. He would put all his energy out there on a gig, spend all kinds of time beforehand choosing the right music for an occasion, for a client, and I think it hurt him that people wouldn’t see his work, wouldn’t view him as a professional, that he was defined solely by his girth.
He’d come home and not want to talk about his work anymore.
He’d just lock himself up in his studio, and my only contact with him was listening to the bass vibrating through the ceiling.
He’d eat when he was depressed, then feel more depressed when he gained weight. It turned into a morose cycle.
“His escape from that was working on the house. I think it gave him a sense of identity outside his stage persona. He defined himself as a DIY dude, and in that world, there was no stopping him. He was always happiest with a power saw in his hands. He, uh, paid for most of the materials from his side jobs.”
“But…” I said, filling in the word I sensed she’d omitted.
She winced. “Because I inherited the property before we got married, California didn’t consider it community property. And my lawyers pounced on the fact that he had no way to prove he had paid for any of the renovations, not without admitting where the money had come from.”
“And that would have gotten him in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, I imagine.”
She nodded. “I guess that makes me a terrible person, but I felt almost as if he’d deserted me.
I was angry and hurt, and so I just let them do it.
” She started shredding her tissue in her hands.
“Not that I have much to show for it. The lawyers took so much that I couldn’t even afford to keep the house. That was seven years ago.”
“Were you still so at odds? I couldn’t help seeing that whatever you said to Ray that morning really got to him.”
“No, we’d been okay. Not perfect but okay.
We could work together, at least, without any major dustups, and I was really happy for him that he’d decided to prioritize his health, but there was something I had to tell him that I didn’t think he’d take too well, and I had this bright idea that if I did it while they were filming, he couldn’t blow his top. ”
I just waited, using the best strategy I know: let silence prompt the speaker to give more information.
“I drove by the old place the other day,” she said with a bitter smile, “just out of nostalgia, and there’s a sign out front.
They’re tearing it down—well, it and a couple of others—to put in a new Del Taco.
” Her head dropped and she clutched her sweater tighter around her.
“And that’s the last thing I said to him. ”
I gathered a few more tissues from the box and handed them to her.
The tears seemed more from regret than grief but appeared genuine enough, and I was stymied as to what motive she’d have to kill her ex-husband now.
Unless there was more to the story than she was telling.
And call it an instinct or a hunch or intuition, but I suspected that whatever elicited Ray’s angry response had little to do with tacos.
When we exited the restroom, I spotted two crew members dressed in the standard black having a hushed conversation in the hallway.
One man’s eyes seemed to bore into me as I approached him.
The other man’s gaze seemed to follow Sandi.
I smiled and nodded as I glanced over at them and caught the first names on their name tags: Gaelan and Jake.
But that stare had given me such an instant chill that I made a mental note to ask Lieutenant Caceras about them the next time I saw him, which I did as soon as I turned the corner back toward the greenroom.
Most of the contestants had left, presumably taking their places on the soundstage.
“Ah, Jess,” he said. “I think they want you onstage, so I won’t keep you. Mateo told me what you discovered last night, so we’re already running deeper background checks on Julie Clifford and Sandi Flores, who, you might be surprised to know—”
“Is Ray’s ex-wife,” I finished.
“How’s that for possible motive, huh?”
“Probably not as strong as you might think,” I said, then informed him of our brief conversation. “I can’t see what motive she might have to kill her ex or try to shut down the show. Our team has bounced around the idea that Ray might have been killed by something he heard over his headphones.”
“Your team?”
“Actually, it was Maureen’s idea,” I said.
“Hmm. I think I’ll bring Mateo and come have a listen myself tonight, if that’s okay.”
I heard my name being called from the direction of the soundstage, but before I left, I turned back to Lieutenant Caceras. “I know you’re doing deeper dives into the backgrounds of the crew. I’d be curious what you’ve dug up on two crew members named Gaelan and Jake.”
“Any reason?”
I looked up, as if the ceiling held the answer. “Call it intuition. Call it instinct.”
“Good enough for me.” He scribbled their names into his notebook.
I was the last contestant to take my seat. I noticed Seth had ordered me a cranberry juice in a wineglass as my beverage prop.
Mort leaned over. “Anything going on?”
“I’ll explain later,” I said as Mike rushed over with my lapel mic.
I passed around the answer sheets, which had been placed at my spot at the table, then glanced over at the other teams while Jenny called the roll for the sound check.
Curt and Bert looked physically better today, I thought, recalling Seth’s concern about their color, and I wondered if it could have been just too much strong coffee affecting them the last couple of days.
The Morrisville Masterminds looked cool and collected as well.
Julie Clifford sat primly at the Sagebrush Sages’ table, and I thought about her money woes. Was that her motivation for being on this show? What else might her desperate circumstances have motivated her to do?
I then scanned the area where the crew were gathered just offstage. Sandi Flores had collected her emotions and was staring intently at her computer screen, its light reflecting on her face and illuminating her slightly reddened eyes.
Gaelan and Jake were still together, standing in the shadows behind the director, Evelyn Grider, who was speaking into a microphone connected to her earpiece. Gaelan’s eyes caught mine briefly, and I forced my gaze to move on.
Bobby took the podium at the last minute, and moments later, the stage lights grew brighter and the questions started to fly.
The first category had us fill in the missing words from various advertising jingles. I caught Mort’s eye and winked when one of them turned out to be for Oscar Mayer bologna, which had figured into a Cabot Cove homicide not that long ago.
Seth scribbled down a word to complete an old Burma-Shave ad, while Maureen seemed confident jotting down answers when the questions shifted to newer jingles for products that I’d never heard of.
The second category was Cocktails, which we had to name from their ingredients. It started with a stumper: whiskey, lemon juice, simple syrup, dry red wine, and ice. There was an audible sound of shifting as contestants, including my teammates, looked to each other, hoping someone had an answer.
I jotted down New York Sour, which had sprung to mind, but I wasn’t completely confident in that answer, nor from what far recess of my memory it had sprung. Perhaps a character in one of my early books ordered it at a bar in New York City?
I was more confident of my answers to several questions in that category, suddenly thankful that while I don’t often imbibe, I’d written dozens of characters who did, requiring me to know far more about mixology than one might expect of a tea-swilling schoolteacher from Maine.
The final category of the day was Myths on Film—that is, films based on Greek or Roman mythology. I hoped that if we paired my knowledge of literature with Seth’s and Mort’s knowledge of history—along with Maureen’s popular culture—we might work out the answers together.
The final question finished, Bobby Brandon segued to a commercial break, then the director called cut and asked him to reread a question he had stumbled on earlier. Then all the cameras took positions closer to the teams.
Mort scratched his ear. “We’ve got a lot of work cut out for us.”
“Today seems harder,” Maureen said.
“I think we can figure out a few of the questions we’re not sure of.
” I then read through the first category, and we quickly agreed on the jingle answers without too much debate, although Mort did tease Seth about his age when the Burma-Shave question came up, but I put a quick end to it by moving on to Cocktails.
Mort sat slack-jawed while I supplied the answers to three questions in a row. Finally, he asked, “Book research? Or should I have my deputies breathalyze you when you’re out on one of your bicycle jaunts?”
“Definitely research,” I said. “Although I have sampled a few so my character could describe them.” I held up my thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart to imply that I didn’t do it often.
It was Seth who knew that gin, vodka, and dry vermouth garnished with a lemon peel made up a drink known as a Vesper Martini. “James Bond,” he said.
“I thought that was just a vodka martini, shaken not stirred,” Mort said.