Chapter Seventeen
I lingered downstairs to help Victoria straighten up a little after Caceras and Mateo left and the others had straggled off to bed.
As I collected the dirty teacups and forks, I said, “Victoria, I hope you won’t think of me as an interfering old biddy, and if it’s none of my business, please tell me, but I can’t help but be concerned about what happened on the dock with Howard’s stalker.”
When she didn’t answer, I spun to face her and found her shoulders bobbing in suppressed laughter.
“Have I missed something?” I said.
“Oh, Aunt Jess, it’s okay. We all did. Howard didn’t recognize the woman’s name because she changed it for some reason. And he didn’t recognize her because back then, she was about, oh, yea high.” She held her hand up to just above her waist.
I squinted at her, my sleepy brain taking its time to process what she’d just said.
“It took both of us to figure it out, but remember that first sitcom Howard was on, when he played the uncle to that precocious little thing, the kid who was smarter than her parents?”
“You don’t mean that woman was…”
Victoria nodded. “Well, half of her. The role was split by twin sisters, Mindy and Cindy. It’s pretty common in Hollywood because of the rules for child actors.
“Of course, now Howard feels terrible that he didn’t recognize her.
He was always fond of the children he worked with.
He’d tease them and perform little magic tricks for them, even show up at their birthday parties, almost like a real uncle.
She must have been devastated when he pushed her away like that and didn’t even know her. ”
“That happens sometimes with me and my former students,” I said. “Sometimes they change so much. Did you learn what she had wanted to talk with him about?”
“Not yet. Howard tried to text her back, but now she’s ghosting him. He’s going to give it a couple more days for her to calm down and try it again. I wonder if all those pregnancy hormones got to her, but I wouldn’t know.”
“Nor would I,” I said.
“Look, I feel like I put you on the spot the other night, Aunt Jess,” Victoria said. “Especially with all that’s going on, I didn’t intend for you to have to solve my problems too, but it meant a lot for me to have someone to talk with, someone who understands.”
I sat back down on the sectional and patted the seat next to me.
“Victoria,” I said after she’d joined me, “you had asked me if the pain ever went away, and I was truthful when I said that it doesn’t, not completely, but I also want you to know that it does get better.
As it turns out, there’s more than one way to start a family.
Your Uncle Frank and I had each other for many years, and after Grady’s parents died, he became like a son to us. ”
“You mean that maybe we should adopt?” She fingered the neckline of her robe again. “We have talked about it.”
“That’s certainly one way, but that’s not where I was going with this thought. If I may, I was blessed to have Frank and Grady for many years, but then Grady went away to college and eventually got married and started a family of his own, and your Uncle Frank passed on…”
“Oh no!” Victoria’s brows pinched together. “I never thought of you being all alone! Maybe you should move out here and live with us.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I wouldn’t exactly call myself all alone either.
See, there are some people with whom you share a bloodline, but they’re merely relatives.
They don’t really become family until you take the time to get to know them and love them and invest your life in them.
Sometimes family comes from the most unexpected places.
I’m blessed to have family—nieces and nephews and cousins—around the globe, but my friends and neighbors in Cabot Cove are just as dear.
They’re family to me too. I am never alone, and I am truly blessed. ”
* * *
I wasn’t sure how, but I did manage to sneak in a couple of hours of slumber after our conversation, but the alarm summoned me far too soon for me to have claimed a decent night’s sleep.
One of my nagging questions—what had Ray heard that might have led to his death?
—had possibly been answered by our late-night conclave in the theater room, but there were still some big unanswered ones hanging out there, and I ticked them off one by one, trying to pull my brain into gear while the warm water of my morning shower attempted to awaken the rest of me.
Foremost, who put the poison in Ray’s coffee?
When did he, she, or they decide to do it? And where did they get the poison?
The problem with linking Ray’s death to something that he heard that first day of the competition was that it left no time for planning. It meant the killer already had the poison close at hand. But why?
My writer’s brain immediately went to the idea of a seasoned hit man, who might have kept a ready supply for quick jobs, but I dismissed it early.
The idea of poison stored in a piece of jewelry or personal accessory seemed far-fetched, something my editor would have flagged as fantastical, belonging in a spy spoof or maybe a historical mystery, complete with scandal, sword fights, and some crazed monk pulling the strings.
I paid greater attention to my makeup than I had the previous days, feeling thankful as the heavier foundation that the studio had provided almost completely hid the dark circles under my eyes.
I was the last one down to breakfast, and I managed just a cup of tea and half of a toasted bagel before we loaded into the limo—Howard sending us back upstairs to collect a comfortable pair of walking shoes for a potential surprise later—and headed to the studio for the last day of the competition.
Something was going to happen today.
I no longer cared who won the trivia contest, and after one look at Maureen snuggled up against Mort, I didn’t think they did either.
But more than trivia questions would be answered today.
Now that we were pretty certain of a conspiracy to shut down the cell-phone blocker, it should prove fairly easy for Caceras and his team to figure out who else was involved.
They’d be watching for who shut it down and who disappeared to make a phone call or send a text during that time—or rather, tried to.
Caceras and Mateo had sneaked off to the studio after leaving the house to use a little tech magic to make sure the blocker stayed on today.
Maybe that would be enough. Maybe when confronted with the evidence, someone would crack and confess their part and point a finger at the real killer.
But the idea that we might uncover some kind of fledgling gambling conspiracy and that Ray’s killer might go unpunished didn’t sit well in my stomach, and I began to regret that half a bagel.
Who put the methyl cyanide into Ray’s coffee?
I began to consider the crew members we knew were involved in the cheating scheme in some way.
Sandi Flores, Ray’s ex-wife, claimed she was being paid to tuck the answers into a sweater pocket and leave them in a particular locker in the greenroom.
Was that the end of her involvement, or did she know more?
Julie Clifford claimed she was paid to take those answers.
That could be true if someone was trying to make her team the favorites to draw most of the betting money in their direction.
Her team was much weaker without the advantage.
Was someone with Vegas connections gambling that they’d lose on their own, or was Julie supposed to take a dive on the final day?
Evelyn Grider was involved in the cell-phone blocking.
But what information was being transmitted while the blocker was shut down, and to whom?
The way I understood it, players at home would type their answers into their phones while the questions were being read, and had to submit them by the end of the commercial break before the show broadcast the prerecorded team deliberations.
By the time the cell-phone blocker was cut off, it would be difficult for someone playing at home to type all the information into the app before that window closed.
The idea that someone was transmitting the team standings made more sense, and certainly some idea of how each team was doing might be gotten by someone watching the deliberations, but it would be difficult to follow all four teams at once.
The only way to be certain of the team standings would be to access the official answer sheets, and those were collected by Jenny Yager.
Was she also a member of this conspiracy?
“Jenny Yager,” I said aloud.
“Hmm?” Seth said.
“What about her?” Mort asked.
“She would be the best one to have access to the teams’ answer sheets, right?” I asked.
“Not sure how that works,” Mort said. “Didn’t she say that she and the judges went over them before the live show?”
“And the judges are the writers,” I said, “which included Sandi Flores as well. So it was likely either Sandi or Jenny supplied the team scores to Gaelan and Jake.”
“You do realize that your theory is based almost entirely on supposition,” Mort said. “With no direct link to Ray’s death.”
My mind was still swirling with theories as we arrived in the parking garage and made our way through security, so much so that I almost didn’t notice the change in atmosphere as we walked past the soundstage.
Bobby Brandon was in a deep conversation with Marty Wardell. I spotted Mike and a number of other crew members watching from a distance.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“From what I overheard,” Mike said, “someone tried to kill Bobby again.”
“Another snake?” Mort scoffed.
Mike shook his head. “Tampering with his nose-hair trimmer, of all things. Got a nasty shock when he tried to plug it in.”
“Has he seen a doctor?” Seth asked.
“Set medic said he was fine,” Mike said. “Lucky guy.”
“I wonder…” I tipped my head toward Bobby’s dressing room, and my team followed me.