Chapter Eighteen
“You nicked that fingernail again, Ms. Fletcher,” Lee Ann Carroll said. “We’d better touch it up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not sure when I might have done that.” Although I suspected it probably occurred when shuffling through all that paperwork the evening before.
She took another look at my hand. “And that’s right. Real nails.” She rummaged through her case of supplies and pulled out the nail polish remover.
I looked at her worn case. “Do you bring in your own supplies?”
“It’s the only way of getting what I really need,” she said.
“You put a request through purchasing around here, and not only does it take weeks to get, but by the time they shop for the best price, some cost cutter ends up buying something completely useless. They’ll promise it’s just as good, but it never is, so I just buy it and submit the receipts for reimbursement. ”
“I was thinking about trying artificial nails when I got home,” I said. “Maybe for dressy occasions.”
“I don’t see why,” Lee Ann said. “Yours seem strong, and I can see you’re not a nail biter. You could probably grow those out if you wanted them longer.”
“Possibly, but I’m a writer, and I keep them shorter for typing, but maybe for holiday parties or award dinners, longer nails would be nice. I’m a little afraid to try it though. When I chipped mine earlier this week, you said they’re more difficult to remove?”
“With normal nail polish remover, yeah, but not if you buy the good stuff.”
I knew I was only playing a hunch, but I could feel my pulse accelerating, and I struggled to keep the excitement out of my voice when I asked, “And what do you recommend?”
She finished applying the polish to my nail without saying anything, and for a moment, I wondered if she was going to answer me at all, but then she reached into her case and set a bottle down in front of me.
“I might need to order more,” she said. “A couple of ladies on the set keep borrowing it when they lose a nail.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve had this for quite a while though. I hope they still make it.”
I tried to keep my face expressionless as I pulled on my reading glasses and looked for the list of ingredients on the label.
Active ingredient: Acetonitrile.
* * *
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Jenny called out and began herding us toward the stage.
I looked briefly for Lieutenant Caceras, but he was nowhere to be seen.
I was one of the last people onstage, and Mike immediately hooked up my lapel microphone.
“Something wrong, Jess?” Seth asked.
I opened my mouth, intending to tell my team about the acetonitrile, but then remembered the live microphone attached to my lapel.
Anything I said now, on this stage, might be overheard.
And that’s what got Ray killed. Instead, I shook my head and sent Seth what I hoped resembled a reassuring smile.
Even if the killer didn’t try to harm me, if my discovery of the likely murder weapon got out, the killer or one of his or her accomplices might just as easily dispose of it before I could alert Caceras.
I’d likely found the poison, but I still hadn’t identified the killer. Was Lee Ann part of the gambling conspiracy? If so, how many other crew members were involved?
While the sleep-deprived parts of my brain were racing toward paranoia—that the whole crew was working together and waiting for us to slip up, that we’d be lucky to leave the studio alive—the more rational parts started trying to talk me off the ledge.
The killer was someone who had ready access to the poison, and the list of suspects with such access would be much shorter than the list of names in the credits of this television program.
Then I recalled Lee Ann saying that multiple women in the crew—she’d said a couple—wore fake nails and had been known to borrow her special acrylic nail remover.
If we focused on access to the murder weapon, that would seemingly narrow the suspect pool down to three.
But did Lee Ann have some heretofore unknown reason to kill Ray, or had one of these two other fancy-nailed women done the deed?
Or might they have obtained the bottle to be used by someone else?
Seth tapped me on the arm.
“Hmm?” I said.
“Sound check,” he whispered.
“Here,” I called out.
Mort’s eyes narrowed on me, and I tried to shrug off the invading thoughts and focus on the task at hand. We still had a competition to finish.
I took a few deep breaths and gathered the papers in front of me.
Bobby took his position at the lectern, looking as if nobody had just tried to kill him, probably because nobody had.
I almost felt sorry for him. Here he was, confident that his plan had worked, that he could extricate himself from the contract for Pub Trivia Live and walk into an even cushier job as the host of one of the top three game shows—the aspiration of a lifetime—and it was all about to come crashing down around him.
But one look at his smug expression and any sympathy was washed away.
I let my eyes sweep across the console area.
New people had taken Ray’s spot and Sandi’s.
Evelyn stood, with Gaelan and Jake positioned behind her once more.
I couldn’t help looking at her nails, those impossibly long nails, and I had to force my eyes away.
She and her two shadows were also unaware that their involvement in shutting down the cell-phone blocker, presumably for gambling purposes, had been discovered and that Caceras and his team were lying in wait for them to attempt it again.
How many of these faces would be missing on Monday—and would the show even survive the scandal?
The stage lights grew brighter, Evelyn gave the go-ahead, and Bobby Brandon started his introduction.
“Welcome back, everyone, to Pub Trivia Live, America’s most popular new game show.
We’re here for our last day of the five-day tournament, with three great teams remaining.
Remember, today’s scores will be added to yesterday’s before we crown our first champion.
As you can see on our leaderboard, the Sagebrush Sages have twenty-six points, and the Bakersfield Brainiacs and Mainely Brilliant are tied at an astonishing twenty-nine points. Let’s see how many they can add today.”
And then the questions came our way.
The first category was called First Aid (for) Dummies, with parentheses around the word “for,” a slightly humorous nod to the practice dummies used to teach CPR, I suspected.
The questions barely registered in my sleep-deprived brain, but both Mort and Seth furiously scribbled down answers about how to respond to various and sundry illnesses and injuries, so my own lack of concentration didn’t bother me much.
I took a sip of my cranberry juice and then a few more deep breaths, trying again to rein in my racing thoughts as the second category was announced: The Bard On and Off Broadway, for which, I was certain, my team was counting on my input.
Normally, I’d be delighted by the chance to combine my knowledge of classical literature from years of teaching English and my love of the theater, but I hoped the distracting thoughts pinging about in my brain wouldn’t hamper my performance.
The first questions were easy enough, such as which actor had given the quintessential portrayal of a character on Broadway, but then they started to veer away from traditional stagings of Shakespeare’s plays to more modern interpretations.
“Six,” Bobby said. “What Broadway musical paired the songs of Cole Porter with Baptista’s attempt to rid himself of his self-willed daughter?
“Seven,” Bobby said. “When the tale of star-crossed lovers moves from Verona to New York, what stage prop replaces the balcony?
“Eight,” Bobby said. “A version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night set in the Midwest in the 1950s provided a showcase for what musician’s ample playlist?
“Nine,” Bobby said. “The long-running off-Broadway musical The Donkey Show, set to a driving disco beat, is a retelling of which Shakespeare comedy?”
I’d heard of it, of course. This was a play I’d been hoping to see, although it closed shortly before I moved to New York to teach at Manhattan College. But which play was the inspiration?
Maureen sent me a panicked look.
“And ten,” Bobby said before my sleepy brain could summon an answer. “Pair The Tempest with a bit of campy sci-fi, and you might just get this Olivier Award–winning off-Broadway gem set in the twenty-third century that features such musical numbers as ‘Monster Mash’ and ‘Good Vibrations.’ ”
I was totally at a loss on this one but was encouraged to see Mort scribble something down, then he looked at me and winked.
The third category was Aliens We Have Known and Loved, and instead of jotting down answers, I tried to catch as much of the clues as possible in case Mort and Maureen needed a reminder.
When the questions were finished and Evelyn paused to reposition the cameras for the deliberation section, my earlier adrenaline rush had ended in a crash, and all I really wanted to do was put down my head and catch a few winks.
“Are you okay?” Seth asked.
“Just the week catching up…” I started, but was interrupted with a yawn.
“We’re almost finished,” Maureen said. “Coming down the home stretch. We can do this!”
I was pleased to see her enthusiasm returning.
The prospect of being tools in a game manipulated by some kind of organized gambling ring had put a damper on it.
She’d even wondered out loud last night whether it made sense to deliberately lose in order to stymie their intentions, but as a team, we decided we’d come here to do our best, and we’d do that until the end.
The memory made me sit up a little straighter.
Once the cameras were rolling, I started compiling our answers. Mort and Seth were in agreement about most of the first aid questions, and when they weren’t, Mort yielded to Seth’s medical knowledge.
Then came the Shakespeare category.
“The Cole Porter musical is Kiss Me, Kate,” I said.
“Of course!” Maureen said. “I love that movie.” She turned to Mort. “It has that song you like with Keenan Wynn.”
“ ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare,’ ” he said with a gleam in his eye. “Funny stuff. All about using Shakespeare to pick up women.”
“Hmm,” Maureen said. “I forgot that part. Now, number seven sounds like West Side Story, but I’m not sure what replaces the balcony.”
I said, “It’s a fire escape.”
“That makes sense to me,” Seth said.
None of the team members proposed any other answer, so I wrote it on the official answer sheet. “The next one I’m almost certain is Elvis Presley, although the name of the musical slips my mind.”
“There’s a musical featuring a bunch of Elvis songs?” Mort asked.
“When they use a compilation of hit songs as the score, it’s called a jukebox musical,” I said.
“I’ll have to look and see if that’s on YouTube when we get home,” Mort said.
“The next question is one I need to think about,” I said. “The Donkey Show was a disco musical based on which play? I never saw The Donkey Show, but I know a donkey features in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck plays a prank on Bottom and turns his head into a donkey’s.”
“Good enough for me,” Seth said.
I wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the official answer sheet, with a little asterisk next to it, in case we had time to revisit the question.
“And the last one, a blend of sci-fi and The Tempest? Besides knowing that it must have debuted in London, I haven’t got a clue, but I did see our dear sheriff writing something down.”
Mort smiled. “I saw this one on YouTube, but I didn’t know anything about the Shakespeare stuff before I watched it. Forbidden Planet is a cult classic and one of my favorites. The musical is called Return to the Forbidden Planet. I’m positive.”
Seth looked up at him. “I didn’t know they made a sequel, much less a musical version.”
“Hollywood didn’t,” Mort said. “The version I saw was a stage production and campy as all get-out. We should have a movie night when we get home.”
“I’ll bring the popcorn.” I wrote Mort’s answer down on the sheet. “That brings us to the final category: Aliens We Have Known and Loved. And do I need to say I’m relying on you all?”
Mort and Maureen, with occasional input from Seth, supplied me with the answers for the last category, namely ET—even I knew that one—the Borg, Mork, Groot, ALF, Marvin the Martian, Krypton, Doctor Who, Jar Jar Binks, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, with Mort insisting I spell clowns with a K.
“Now we definitely need a movie night,” Seth said, then when he caught me yawning again, added, “but not before someone gets a nap.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him. We had a little time remaining, so we went over the answers one more time and elected not to change any.
“Win or lose,” Maureen said, “we make a great team. And I know a couple of you weren’t all that keen on making the trip”—she looked at me and then Seth—“but it’s been a great adventure, and I appreciate you.
No, that’s not enough,” she added, her voice growing husky with emotion. “I love you guys so much.”
Mort reached over to give her a hug, then we all left our seats and joined in, wiping away a few tears. Yes, we knew the camera was on us, but I don’t think any of us cared.