Chapter Fifteen
We were a well-fed, wind-tousled, much-relaxed group when we climbed the steps, shook the last of the sand from our shoes, and headed back to the old mansion.
Well, maybe except for Howard. He had vociferously denied knowing the woman at the dock, and I tended to believe he was telling the truth.
The stranger, apparently his stalker, aka Désirée, had tracked him down from his last social media post tagging the restaurant and claimed she was desperate to talk with him.
She’d seemed devastated both by his failure to answer her texts and by his denying that he even knew her.
“How could you?” she had literally screamed out before she fled in a fit of hysterics.
Howard and Victoria had exchanged several meaningful glances at the dock, which signaled a private conversation was due, but since Victoria had driven her own car, I knew it hadn’t taken place yet.
Howard’s grim expression as he swallowed hard, then climbed the steps, lent him the look of a prisoner marching to the gallows, and he excused himself as soon as we entered the house, probably looking for Victoria to have that private conversation.
I was tempted to follow him, but Mort put a hand on my arm. “Not our monkeys, not our circus.”
Maureen rolled her eyes. “What my husband is unartfully saying is that we probably need to give those kids some alone time to figure things out.”
The strains of a film motif emanated from the theater room, suggesting Danielle Gray might be reliving her glory days again—or at least dozing to the sounds of them, putting my hopes of taking another look at the footage from Day One, including the crew audio tracks, on hold for a bit.
“I don’t know about anyone else,” Seth said, “but I needed this evening off. And since it’s well past my bedtime, at least on the other coast, I’ll bid you all goodnight.”
“Sleep well, Seth,” I said.
Mort looked at his watch.
“Thinking of calling it an evening too?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I think I’m finally starting to adjust to California time. Besides, I should probably sit up a little longer. Let all that food digest.”
“I told you that cake was a bad idea,” Maureen said.
In the communal nature of the meal, Mort and Seth had conspired to order a single piece of chocolate cake to share for dessert.
I’d missed the note in the menu saying that one slice weighed about two pounds!
I’d taken a couple of half-hearted bites, then yielded to my betters.
“Oh, hi!” Ginette approached with a bulging accordion file folder. “I thought I heard you all come in. That Lieutenant Caceras stopped by a while ago and dropped this off for Mrs. Fletcher.”
Mort laughed as she foisted the heavy parcel into my hands. It had the heft of an old phone book—from someplace like Boston, not Cabot Cove’s slender offering. “Well, maybe I will go to bed,” he said.
Maureen grabbed his upper arm. “Not so fast, mister. Jessica, would you like our help going through all those background checks?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
“Any chance of getting a cup of coffee, Ginette?” Mort asked.
“Of course,” she said, looking at our take-out containers. “I take it nobody is hungry.”
We answered with groans, and Ginette laughed and volunteered to put our leftovers in the refrigerator. “I’ll put on the coffee. Anything else?”
“Perhaps a pot of tea?” I asked.
I carried the folder to the dining room table.
Once I slid the reports out, I could see why Lieutenant Caceras had given them only a brief perusal.
“Most of this information is pretty mundane stuff,” I said.
“Name, occupation, contact information—including phone numbers and addresses—employment history. There’s a spot for past offenses, but since the lieutenant already said no felonies, I gather there won’t be much to learn from that section. ”
“How do you want to do this?” Mort asked. “If Howard and Victoria are coming back, we could divide that stack up five ways.”
“I don’t know,” Maureen said. “You know it takes time for young couples to work out their issues.” She blushed ever so slightly. “And time to make up.”
Mort didn’t seem to catch her meaning. “Never changes. It’s the one constant in every investigation I’ve ever been a part of: Nobody wants to do the paperwork. Three ways, then?”
I distributed the stack somewhat randomly, taking the first section, handing the second to Mort, and the third to Maureen.
I pulled on my reading glasses and dug in, but it didn’t take long for my eyes to start blurring, staring at table after table of dry facts. I was relieved when Ginette set a pot of tea and a cup near me, and I took a moment to pour and savor the scent before sipping.
From what I’d seen, Marty Wardell lived with his wife in Malibu, not far, actually, from the restaurant where we had dined.
When I Google-Mapped Bobby Brandon’s address, it appeared he lived near his producer, but that wasn’t information that was completely unexpected, since Wardell had married Bobby’s sister. Perhaps the siblings remained close.
Neither Wardell nor Brandon had any felonies, but Wardell had been involved in multiple lawsuits over former productions.
The detective responsible for the research had done due diligence and included the outcome of cases that had already been decided: Wardell had been required to pay damages over issues like copyright infringement and breach of contract to the tune of more than six million dollars over the last five years, with several cases still pending.
“I wonder what Wardell’s net worth might be,” I said aloud, then shared my findings with Mort and Maureen.
“Gotta be a lot if he lives in one of those Malibu beach houses,” Mort said. “Maybe six mil is a drop in the bucket to guys like that.”
Howard entered the room. I couldn’t read anything from his face, and although I longed to ask about his conversation with Victoria, I knew it wasn’t my place.
It pained me to think of two of my favorite people, normally such sweet lovebirds, being at odds with each other over what might yet prove to be some kind of misunderstanding.
He found the coffeepot on the sideboard and poured himself a cup before joining us at the table. “I, uh, did phone my agent to see if she knew anything about Wardell or Grider or any of the others in Pub Trivia Live.”
“Learn anything?” I asked him.
“Not yet. She said she’d put in a few calls for me though. But I did get an audition for next week.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Not sure I want it,” he said with the same expression Grady had on his face every time I served him broccoli. “It’s another weird uncle part, and I was hoping for something a little different.”
“Like another singing fruit?” Mort asked.
Howard glared at him.
“Sing the jingle?” Mort said. “Please?”
Howard shook his head.
“Friendly wager,” Mort said. “If we win the whole kit and caboodle, will you sing the jingle?”
I cleared my throat. “Howard, maybe you could answer this question instead. How would we go about finding Marty Wardell’s net worth?”
He pulled out his phone. “I think there’s a website that tracks that kind of thing.
Not sure where they get their information, unless they’re paying off a bunch of accountants under the table, but…
here it is. They have his net worth at…nineteen million.
You know, considering that includes real estate holdings, that’s not all that much by Hollywood standards. ”
“So six million is not a drop in the bucket,” Maureen said. “It’s a substantial chunk.”
“And with more cases outstanding,” I said, “he could be in financial trouble.”
“Which tells us what?” Maureen said.
“That he needs Pub Trivia Live to succeed, for one,” Mort said.
“Maybe?” I said. “I wish Grady were here. He worked briefly as an accountant for a theater production, and in that case, the producers were trying to force the show to fail so they wouldn’t have to pay off the investors they were swindling.”
“Like The Producers?” Howard asked.
“Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder,” Maureen said, “written and directed by Mel Brooks, Embassy Pictures…1967.” She tallied an imaginary point with her finger in the air.
“Could that be happening here?” Mort asked.
Howard grimaced and started scrolling through information on his phone. “Unlikely,” he said. “Unless he somehow managed to bribe one of the most reputable independent accounting firms in the business.”
“So it’s not managed by an in-house accountant?” I said.
“Nope.” Howard set his phone on the table, then leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head.
“Can’t blame them there either. Handling the finances of a game show is a complicated endeavor.
They’d have money coming in from start-up investors, advertising, and syndication contracts, and funds going out in salaries and prizes and other operating expenses.
Plus, whatever their agreement is with the studio.
Could be a rental, could be a percentage.
I don’t think one person could manage it all. ”
“And bribing multiple accountants is more difficult,” I said.
“It was a good thought,” Mort said. “So we’re back to the idea that Wardell has no motive to tank his own show.”
Victoria rushed in. “I’ve got something on Wardell.”
“Too late, honey,” Howard said. “I think we just cleared him.”
“I’d still like to hear what she discovered,” I said.
“Sorry it took so long,” Victoria said. “My associate is such a gossip I had to hear the dirt on the whole office first. But this fact is interesting: She didn’t just sell one house to Wardell. She sold him two.” Victoria raised two fingers.
“They have two homes in the LA area?” Mort asked.
“The big beach house in Malibu,” Victoria said, “and more recently, he bought a smaller but still pricey luxury condo closer to the studio.”
“Probably so he doesn’t have to get stuck in all that traffic,” Mort said.
But Victoria smiled.
“You learned something else,” I said.
She nodded.
“Tell us,” Howard said.