The Tell-Tale Con (29 page)

“Talia, stay out of murder,” she said at last, pulling Mr. Wong's aged silver compact up to the curb.  “It's not good, that stuff.”

“No one murdered anyone,” I said.  “Actually, that isn't true.  Someone did murder someone.  It just wasn't me or anyone I know.”

She sighed.  “Your dad isn't going to be pleased.”

I sighed too.  “Yeah, because I'm concerned he might be disappointed in me.  His standards are so high.”  I got out of the car and headed upstairs, locking myself in my room before she could try to talk to me anymore. 

What I wanted to do was talk to Harrison.  Barring that, I had to do something.  I was certain that Kanako wouldn't let Harrison fester in prison.  She would bail him out.  Waiting until she did was the hard part. 

I took all the names that Harrison had given me and called Sam first, then Hector.  My desktop was on the fritz, and I didn't have a laptop.  Even if I'd had one, Mr. Wong's wasn't exactly a WiFi hot spot. 

I divvied up the list between them, the three-way call feature making the whole thing much more efficient.  “I can't get out right now, but I'll meet up with you in the morning.  I appreciate it.”

“So you want us to look for any recent articles about these people?  I mean, some of these people are pretty famous.”  Sam sounded doubtful. 

“No, not any articles.  Articles about major changes they've made recently or ways their lives seem to be exponentially downward spiraling.  What about you, Hector?  You think you've got it under control?”

“Yup.”  He didn't offer anything else so I told them I'd see them in the morning, thanked them again, and went to bed.  It was very late, but I couldn't sleep.  I was waiting for a call from Harrison.  Which annoyed me at the same time as I had to embrace it, since it was true.  I finally fell asleep about two in the morning, the yellow rubber phone tucked into the crook of my arm like a bizarre teddy bear. 

 

The ringing of the phone woke me up at six thirty Monday morning.  I stared at the display with blurry eyes and realized the number belonged to Harrison.  Also that I was still wearing my contacts and my eyes were grainy and irritated.  I scrambled to answer, almost falling out of bed in my haste. 

“Hello?”

“Hey.”  Harrison's voice sounded as irritated as my eyes, low and hoarse. 

“Are you okay?” 

I hated that I had asked and I hated that I was desperate for the answer.  “Yeah, I'm okay.  I'm at home.”

I closed my eyes, breathing in a sigh of relief.  “I'm sorry.  I guess you were right.  We shouldn't have gone to the bank.”

I could practically hear him shrug over the phone.  “It's the least of my worries, Talia.  Kanako got me out on bail, and anyway, they don't care.  They just wanted to hold me while they tried to find a way they could charge me for Nate's murder.”

“They won't be able to do that.”  Though I believed that they couldn't, panic rose, and I tamped it down with irritation.

“Hopefully not.  What's going down today?  We going to school?”

I sat up in the bed.  “I have Hector and Sam looking up articles.  We're supposed to meet them before class.  I know we're missing something.  I'm just not sure what it is.” 

“I'm going to lie down.  I was sitting at a cold metal table all night.  I need to take a little nap.  Call me if you find anything.  Otherwise, I'll see you in an hour at ‘Half a Cup'.  We can go to school from there.”

An hour wasn't very long, but the man knew how long he needed to nap for, and it wasn't my job to be his mother.  So I bit back the urge to tell him to sleep for longer.  Wasn't my business. 

I dressed and headed out into the cold to find Hector and Sam at ‘Half a Cup'.  They were at a seat in the corner nursing some of the bizarre concoctions that the store specialized in.  They greeted me, barely looking up from their searches.  Sam told me, with clear excitement, that they'd discovered lots of things before my arrival.  They were really enjoying this. 

Weirdos. 

I slumped into a chair.  “You guys do know that we aren't Mystery Inc., right?”

I felt Harrison's breath on my neck before I realized he was there.  I didn't know how I knew it was him without looking.  I just did.  He leaned over my shoulders and took in the scene.  “If we are, I get to be Daphne,” he said.

I turned, repressing a shiver.  At the surprise of being breathed on.  Or something.  “Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?”

Hector moved over to allow space for him to pull up another chair.  “Hmm.  And yet I'm not.”  He sat backwards in his chair and rested his chin on his crossed arms.  “I think I'm too amped up by Wallace's style of interrogation to sleep.”

“Who's Wallace?  Is that Bad Cop?”

He laughed.  “Bad Cop?  I guess I could see why you would call her that.  You're almost worse than Nate was with names.”

I shrugged.  “I have my own system.”

Harrison actually seemed to be smiling at the memory of his cousin.  “He did too.  He'd give everyone a nickname because he couldn't remember who they were.  Hat Head Guy, Sports Screamer, that kind of thing.”

I paused.  “What if C.A. isn't initials.  I mean, not for a name anyway.  What if it's his system?  Like Constipated Astronaut or Constant Arguer.”

Harrison put his head down on his hands.  “That makes sense.  I can't believe I didn't think of it before.  All that time wasted looking for someone with the right initials.  Of course, it could still be anyone.  That doesn't help narrow the field.”

“No, it doesn't.”

“Well.”  Hector pulled another laptop out of his messenger bag and placed it between Harrison and me.  “I brought an extra.” 

I didn't have the heart, or the energy, to tell him we'd given up on that long ago.  We were mostly silent at the table for the next half an hour.  Hector was the fastest among us, flipping from one screen to another with a speed that suggested he wasn't actually reading anything, only opening and closing windows.  He went back for so many refills that he might as well have hooked himself up with an IV infusion.  Sam was slower and more thoughtful, though once when I glanced at her screen she was on TMZ reading an article about naked Prince Harry. 

Harrison and I were silent, sharing the same computer and reading through fifty million articles I'd already seen.  Many of them on people I'd already discounted as suspects.  But at this point I didn't know what else to do. 

“Noah Pince and Gina Wilson are getting divorced,” Sam told us. 

Noah Pince was a fellow director who had lost a hit show to Van through dirty pool.  Ana had given us the name on her list.  But the event in question had happened ten years before, and Gina, a twenty-year-old starlet from British Columbia, had been in elementary school at the time.  There was little chance that there was any connection.  But it was exactly the kind of information I had asked she and Hector to find for me, so I made a note and thanked her. 

Hector discovered that one of the people on Ana's list had died last week of cancer.  I crossed the name off.  Harrison and I found a note that Van's first wife, with whom he had no children, had moved in with an Orlando Bloom look-alike in Flagstaff, Arizona. 

But I still wasn't sure how any of it mattered.

Sam glanced up at me.  “Okay, I've got a hit on Vickie Bridges.  Do you know she was my mom's favorite actress?  She makes me watch all those awful early 90's teen movies all the time.”  Sam made a gagging face. 

“Okay, what is it?”  I decided to redirect Sam before she went off on a tangent. 

“Oh.”  Sam glanced at the screen again.  “She's going to be in some production of
As You Like It
at the Kimo.  It was just announced yesterday as her return to public life.  Mom is going to be thrilled.”

Harrison's head jerked up.  “Wait, what?”

“She's agoraphobic,” I objected.

Sam looked back at the article.  “Well, it says she's been suffering from agoraphobia for almost fifteen years, but she's considered in good health now and is quoted as looking forward to her return to acting.”

Harrison and I met gazes.  “Her nurse said she was dying,” I added. 

Sam bit her bottom lip and returned to her screen.  “It's the only article about the play I could find.  There's also a note in an industry magazine that her agent is in talks for a small part in a television show next year.”

“Her nurse lied to us,” Harrison said. 

“Okay, I think it's time to go back to Vickie Bridges.” 

I asked Harrison to call Ana and get the name of the psych hospital where Vickie had been treated, or even better the name of the doctors or nurses who had treated her.  I scanned articles trying to figure out where
As You Like It
rehearsals would be.  I wanted to see Vickie Bridges for myself.  

 

 

 

Rules of the Scam #46

Lie like your life depends on it…

 

I was writing down the name of the community center where the rehearsals would be, when Harrison returned with a short list of names.  “These are the only ones Ana could find.  The hospital Vickie was treated at in LA is no longer in use.  The staff have all retired or moved on to other hospitals.”

I looked at the paper.  There were only three names.  A man and two women, all with numbers in the LA area.  There wasn't time to pop over there and interview them, even with Harrison's plane.  “I guess we'll start at the top and work our way down.”

I hadn't yet decided what I would tell these people, but I would figure it out when they answered.  The man turned out to be a doctor, and the hospital at the other end of my phone line informed me without sympathy that he'd died of heart attack thirteen months before.  I thanked the receptionist and crossed out his name.  The second number was also a hospital, a private drug rehab place in Beverly Hills with a name synonymous with the Hollywood party set.  The nurse I was looking for was no longer employed there.  The girl who answered said she was a friend and would take my number and pass it along. 

Running out of hope, I dialed the last number, and when it was answered with a simple hello, I realized I'd reached a residence and not another hospital.  I looked at the sheet again.  “Could I talk to Cindy Leshman?”

“Who's calling?” she asked with enough suspicion that I knew I was talking to her. 

I stood and moved away from the table.  “Hi, my name is…Talia Jones.”  I didn't know if I was too tired or defeated or just out of ideas.  Or maybe Cindy Leshman came across as someone who would respond best to honesty.  Either way, I was too exhausted to care. 

There was a long silence where she was perhaps debating whether or not to demand more information before revealing herself.  “This is Cindy Leshman.”

“Hi,” I said again, not sure where to go from there.  “Look, this is kind of weird, but do you remember working with Vickie Bridges when she was in the Sunset Home?”

I was greeted with another long silence.  Maybe that was the way she answered questions.  “I do.” 

She wasn't very forthcoming.  I decided to dump it all out there.  “Okay, well, I'm here with Harrison Poe.  He's the son of Van Poe, the producer whose movie she was working on when she went all nuts.”

She made a noise that I assumed meant she was listening to me and waiting for more.  “So anyway, Harrison's life is in danger.  I mean, someone is trying to kill him.  Frankly, I'm kind of wondering if maybe it might be Vickie Bridges.  I mean, she lives nearby.  I thought she was a shut-in, but now I read she isn't, and I don't know what to think.  Did she seem dangerous to you?”

This time the silence was so long I started thinking maybe she'd hung up, but finally, she said, “I shouldn't talk to you about it.  But there are two reasons why I will.  I'm retired now and will never nurse again, and also because, frankly, you've frightened me.”

Good, I was frightened too, and I was glad that someone else was with me.

“Vickie Bridges was a mess at first.  I won't go into details of her exact diagnosis, but she was not a well person.  It wasn't until she began to repair herself that it became apparent that she was incredibly resentful of Van Poe.  She'd been getting divorced at the time of her breakdown.  She felt she'd lost custody of her two children entirely because of Van.”

“Was that true?”

“I can't say.  But she definitely felt that it was true.  She was very clear that if she couldn't get her children back, there were two of them if I remember correctly, with very common names, Michael and Jessica I think, she would get revenge.”

This time I blamed my shivers on the powerful air conditioning, not on the darkness in Cindy Leshman's voice.  “Did she get them back?”  I was almost afraid to ask. 

“I don't know.  She hadn't when she went from our hospital to another care facility.  But I don't know what happened after that.  Last I heard they were grown, and one of them is a real estate agent and the other is a nurse.”

“So you think she might be dangerous?”

“All I'm saying is that she swore if her kids didn't come back to her, she would pay Van back in kind.”

I thanked her and hung up the phone, having passed the point of being a little nervous and moved on to plain out alarmed.  There was no guarantee that Vickie Bridges was the person we were looking for, even with the information Cindy Leshman had given me.  But it was certainly worth looking deeper. 

I grabbed Harrison.  “Come on, we're taking a little trip.”

Hector looked up.  “Where are you going?”