The Talk Show Murders (12 page)

The detectives were finished with us at a little before five.

By then, the media crowd had gathered just outside the Kelsto-Parkins property line. While Bollinger and several uniformed officers escorted Josie to his vehicle, his elegantly dressed partner, Ruello (who, it turned out, hoped to one day open his own restaurant in Chicago), led Carrie and me out through the rear.

Continuing to pepper me with questions about food and drink, he took us across the backyard, past the unfinished sculpture. As we approached a fence exit, I said, “Detective Bollinger mentioned the headless corpse is no longer considered a homicide.”

“No. Autopsy said the guy had a bad ticker. Fatal heart attack.”

“My God. Then who … did that to him?” Carrie asked.

“Happily, that’s no longer the problem of the homicide department,” he said, rather cheerily. “But corpse mutilation is no little deal. It carries a ten-year felony ticket.”

“Corpse mutilation,” Carrie repeated, wincing.

The fence exit took us to an alley that led to a street identified as
North Sedgwick. There, Carrie and I bid Detective Ruello adieu and made our way to her BMW parked on West Eugenie.

“What kind of world is this?” Carrie asked. “People being tortured. Corpses being mutilated.” She adjusted her rearview mirror and added, “Just look at that crowd.”

I turned in my bucket seat and observed the media mass nearly a block away. There were several vans almost blocking the street. I supposed one of them might be from our local affiliate, WWBC.

“What do they want?” she asked. “Isn’t there enough bad news in the world?”

“Apparently not.”

“I guess we should consider ourselves lucky,” she said, starting up the BMW and moving it away from the curb. “Maybe they won’t even find out we were in the house.”

So young. So beautiful. So naïve.

“Maybe,” I said, not wishing to dampen her spirits.

As soon as I arrived at the hotel and saw the usually sleepy eyes of the doorman widen on my approach, I realized that once again I’d taken a seat on the murder merry-go-round. In my suite, I discovered that the seat was as hot as a griddle.

The blinking red button on the phone was my first clue. My second was Kiki, in the sitting room, half risen from her chair, looking as though she was about to take flight.

She relaxed at the sight of me and plopped down again, taking a gulp from a water glass containing something that looked like water but probably wasn’t.

“You wouldn’t happen to have another one of those handy?” I asked.

“Glass?”

“The stuff that’s in it.”

“Spirits, then.” She took a second gulp, winced and coughed, not in a ladylike way.

She weaved a little, moving to the minibar, got out a mini bottle of
vodka, cracked the cap, and poured its contents into another water tumbler. Handing it to me, she said, “Another murder, Billy? Really?”

“It’s on the news?”

“It’s been quite a day for news. First it was the story about that headless corpse being a heart attack victim. Now it’s all about you and Carrie Sands discovering the body of the comedian in his basement. On TV. On the Web. On the FM. On that room phone that keeps ringing but that I have stopped answering. And especially on this,” she said, picking my smartphone up from the table. I’d left it recharging in the bathroom. That’s the problem with allowing your assistant to use your hotel room for business. Nothing, least of all your bathroom, is sacred.

I waited for the harsh liquor to clear my tonsils before asking, “What exactly are they saying?”

“Just what I said. You and the actress found the body of that creepy Larry Kelsto.”

“You should speak more kindly of the dead, especially since Larry seemed quite taken with you, as I recall.”

That earned me an eye roll.

“How … ugly was it?” she asked.

“On a scale of one to ten, about twenty-five. He’d been tortured.”

She mock shivered. Or maybe it was genuine. “Why am I not surprised? The other bloke was tortured, too. Patton. Which of us is next? Bad odds, Billy. I told you not to go on that show.”

“I don’t think people are being murdered because of a TV show. And I certainly don’t think
you
have anything to worry about.”

“Coo! I’m so relieved,” she said sarcastically. She reached out to hand me the smartphone. “Best ring up Gretchen and Trina. They’ve been pestering me every twenty minutes for the past two hours.”

I pushed away the straight vodka and asked if she might find something equally lethal that didn’t feel like razor blades sliding down my throat.

“I know how you feel about premixed martinis,” she said.

“Beggars can’t have standards,” I said, rousing my phone from its energy-saving stupor.

Kiki stood, weaving slightly. “Your wish is my command, sire.” She staggered to the minibar and pried loose a couple of tiny bottles of premixed martinis. “We who are about to die … shall join you in a tot of the juniper.”

I watched her unscrew the bottle tops. “If you are about to die, it’ll probably be from alcohol poisoning,” I said.

“Oh, piffle.”

“I’ve never realized before how British you get when you’re shitfaced.”

“Shitfaced. Lovely, Billy. So much more colorful than ‘pissed.’ ”

“I’m guessing the reason you’re booze-soaked is something more than the fear of being murdered. Romance hit the rocks?”

“Fuck off, Billy,” she said haughtily, heading for the loo.

Sounds so much classier when said with a British accent.

I sighed, refocused on the phone, and speed-dialed Gretchen Di Voss, the head of the WBC network. Our arrangement was definitely boss-employee, in spite of a romance that ended a few years ago. Or maybe because of it.

She was still at work in her multi-windowed office overlooking the concrete-and-steel towers of Manhattan. Judging by the chilliness in her voice, she was also mad as hell. “What precisely is your involvement in this club comedian’s murder?”

“Yes, I’m fine, Gretch, thanks for asking. And you?”

She did not reply. When I tired of the metallic, echolike broadcasting-from-your-bathroom sound that rushes into your cellphone when no one is talking, I said, “I happened to be in his home when his body was discovered.”

“Do you need a lawyer?”

“No. At least not yet.”

“According to reports, the man was tortured. I assume the police are linking his death to that of our almost-hired Edward Patton?”

“The lead detective, Bollinger, mentioned something about that,” I said.

“Please don’t tell me that the comedian is in any way connected to WBC.”

I looked at Kiki, who was back, staring at me, fully attentive. Ignoring her drink.

“The comedian—his name was Larry Kelsto, by the way—had been scheduled to appear on the same Gemma Bright show as Patton and me and Carrie Sands. But he was bumped.”

“So this Detective Bollinger’s assumption is what? That something occurred on Gemma’s show that led to murder? That a lunatic is killing everyone who was on the show, and you, the Sands woman, and Gemma are in danger? That either you or Sands
is
the killer?”

Kiki was frowning at me.

“Yes, yes, and doubtful,” I replied.

“Do you need protection?”

I considered making a smart-ass riposte about always carrying protection in my wallet but censored myself. “Not at present.”

“Well, it’s six-twelve your time. Trina will be calling you shortly to let you know when to be at WWBC for a segment on
Hotline Tonight
.”

That was a nightly show hosted by Vida Evans from D.C. Vida was a newswoman with whom I’d shared a somewhat fractured relationship during my brief sojourn in L.A.

“Let’s talk about this,” I said to Gretchen. “I’m not—”

“This is not subject to discussion,” she said. “I was disappointed when you refused to be our on-camera reporter on the progress of the Pat Patton murder investigation. I was outright furious that you didn’t even have the courtesy to let Trina, or anyone else at the network, know about the second murder,
even though you were on the scene
! So you will be on
Hotline Tonight
or … you’ll be out of a job.”

“Since you asked so sweetly, of course I’ll be there,” I said to the phone, even though Gretchen had already hung up.

Kiki watched me put the phone to sleep. “You look like you need this,” she said, pushing the premixed martini my way.

“No ice?” I complained.

“We proud few prefer not to chill our libations.”

I raised the glass in a toast. “To the uncompromised life,” I said.

Trina Lomax had cajoled a satisfactory complement of talking heads for the segment.

In addition to yours truly, the others in the hall just outside of WWBC’s Studio 3 that night included two acquaintances: Carrie Sands, who glommed on to me as if we’d been friends from grade school, whispering, “Do most of the talking, please!,” and Gemma Bright, whose approach was a bit the opposite, clearly not whispering when asking, “What the fuck am I doing here, Billy?” Neither expecting an answer nor getting one.

The strangers were two in number: Lieutenant Maureen Oswald of the CPD Office of News Affairs, a briskly efficient, lean woman with well-groomed reddish-brown hair and a preference for minimal cosmetic enhancement whose active blue eyes suggested both intelligence and a sense of humor, and local private detective, J. B. Kazynski, an amply built dirty blonde in a dark business suit whose arched right eyebrow seemed to suggest a suspicion of events transpiring in the studio, if not life in general.

I was consoling myself with the happy thought that my participation on the show might be minimal with such a full panel when Ms. Kazynski sauntered up, aimed her cocked eyebrow at Carrie, who was on my arm, and said to her in a surprisingly throaty voice, “Think you could go stand on your own two feet somewhere for a few minutes, honey, while I talk to this guy?”

Carrie seemed uncertain as to whether to be annoyed or amused. She chose the latter. Using a breathy voice, she said, “If you need anything, Billy, just whistle,” and strolled off, switching her hips.

Ms. Kazynski didn’t seem to notice. “Have you read
Hot Corner
?” she asked.

She was referencing one of a series of bestsellers by a Chicago author named Stacy Lynne Chomsky, who had appeared on our show. In the thrillers, a character based on and named for Ms. Kazynski undertakes seemingly mundane investigations that invariably lead to much bigger cases.

I told her that I had read the book. Which I had. At least enough of it to know that her fictional counterpart starts out by searching for an anonymous blogger blackmailing her cousin, a standby pitcher for the Cubs, and winds up taking on the military-industrial complex.

“Yeah, well, Stacy Lynne went a little over the top on that one,” she said. “But some of it was straight. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“About the book? Why?” I asked, pretending I had no idea why a novel involving a Chicago-based blackmailing blogger could be in the least relevant.

Her cocked eyebrow went up another quarter-inch. “You didn’t know the bad guy in the novel was based on that bastard Patton?”

“No. Patton was a blackmailer?”

She smiled, and her eyebrow went up another quarter of an inch. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think anything. I barely knew the man.”

“Really? If that’s true, what the hell was he doing in your hotel room the day before he died?”

I didn’t blink. “He wanted to work on our show
Wake Up, America
! He asked me to put in a good word for him.”

“Out of the kindness of your heart?”

“Apparently,” I said. “How’d you know he came to my room?”

“One of my nephews works in the hotel,” she said. “I’ve got relatives just about everywhere in this town. But getting back to Patton, I’d like to know—”

She was interrupted by the floor manager, a young man dressed in denims, a plaid shirt, and a wireless headset. He didn’t look as if he’d started to shave yet. Young and impatient, he herded and hustled all of us into the studio.

“Later,” J.B. said, or perhaps warned.

We were in a space about the size of an average walk-in closet. Three manned cameras were positioned a few feet from a curved desk built to seat a news team of three comfortably, not a panel of five. The rest of the studio was taken up by a backdrop of a Chicago nightscape looming behind our chairs, two overhead monitors, miles of coiled and twisted wires and cords, several technicians, the aforementioned teenage floor manager, and Trina, our beloved producer.

It was like the stateroom scene in
A Night at the Opera
, only minus the Marx Brothers. And the humor.

With uncommon seriousness, Trina instructed us on the seating arrangements.

Gemma and I wound up at opposite ends of the table. “We don’t want you in the same shot,” Trina explained. “This is news. We don’t want it to look like a network promo.”

Ooooo
. Change in policy? Had she watched her own show lately?

She put Carrie next to me, then J. B. Kazynski, and the CPD’s Lieutenant Maureen Oswald, all of us touching shoulders like a flying wedge. Except for Gemma, the others were staring at the monitors. I’m not sure what was occupying Gemma’s thoughts. I was wondering what the others found so fascinating about monitors registering
what in computer language would be called BSD. The blue screen of death.

Shortly before we were set to go live at ten-thirty p.m. our time, eleven-thirty p.m. on the East Coast, the BSD was replaced by a close-up on a polished desk and an empty chair on which Vida Evans would soon be depositing her lovely bottom. Trina gave us a final pep talk, urging us to “just be yourselves, stay attentive, and speak with confidence. And remember, when Vida asks you a question, viewers will hear the question immediately, but there will be a few seconds delay before you hear it here in the studio. You may want to put a thoughtful expression on your face, as if you’re pondering the question. Otherwise, it’ll look to the viewers as if you’re an unresponsive idi—