A Rose From the Dead (23 page)

“Forget about the Beta player, Abby. Go back to Billingsworth. Did he tell you what the big secret was?”

I really didn’t want to be the one to tell Marco that his aunt had been dusting around chicken-bone fragments for the past thirty-five years, so I made a crackling sound, then said, “You’re breaking up, ——arco. You ——ust be out of —— ange. Call me ——ater.”

I snapped the phone shut, stuck it in my pocket, and stepped onto the elevator. Too bad there wasn’t a law class on artful dodging. I would have aced it.

When I got back to our booth it was four fifteen, the only time slot left at the loading dock. Lottie and Max had packed up all the brochures, cards, and photo albums from the table, and Max had carried a load to the van. Lottie had stayed behind to take down the wall decor.

“What happened with the colonel?” she asked as I dropped to my knees and lifted the table skirt to retrieve my purse and the shopping bag.

“He’s not the killer. I’ll tell you about it later, because right now I have to get back to Chet Sunday’s booth.”

I opened the bag, and my heart stopped. There was nothing inside.

“A
re you looking for that yellow package?” Lottie asked. I sat up and banged my head on the edge of the table. “Ouch. Yes. Have you seen it?”

She opened her huge purse and pulled out the big manila envelope. “Sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to give you a fright. I was afraid you’d forget it and someone else would come across it after we’d packed up and gone.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as I opened one end and pulled out the cassette. Lottie peered over my shoulder, reading the label on the spine. “
Chester Cheater
? Is that a video game?”

“I don’t think so.” I turned the case to show her the front.

“A porn flick?”

“That’s my guess, but I won’t know until I find a Beta tape player. We think Sybil was blackmailing at least two people, the colonel being one of them. I’m hoping this tape will show the identity of the second one, because it may also identify a suspect.”

“I thought you were sure it was one of the Urbans.”

“I still think they were involved, but Beta tapes were phased out in the eighties, so it doesn’t seem possible that Ross or Jess is on this tape.”

Lottie tapped her chin. “Could it be that their daddy is in the movie and he’s the one Sybil was blackmailing?”

“That’s a possibility. But somehow I can’t see a high-powered businessman like Conrad Urban putting up with some Mickey Mouse blackmail demands. I doubt even Sybil would have the nerve to attempt that. She was smart enough to know he’d retaliate somehow….”

An idea popped into my head. I glanced at Lottie and saw she was thinking the same thing.

“Maybe Conrad killed her,” we said in unison.

“Maybe,” Lottie mused, “Conrad Urban concocted the whole scheme to lure her to the storage room and let his boys carry it out.”

“Means, motive, and opportunity. You might be on to something, Lottie, except wouldn’t that be a risky thing for a dad to do to his sons?”

“I don’t see Conrad winning any father-of-the-year awards, do you?”

“I see your point. Still, having Ross dress the mannequin afterward doesn’t sound like something a smart, high-powered businessman would do.”

“Maybe Ross just couldn’t stop himself from playing one last prank on her,” Lottie said. “You know the old saying—boys will be boys.”

I had to consider it. As Marco had pointed out, so much just didn’t add up.

“
Chester Cheater
must be a send-up of the cartoon cat Chester Cheetah from those Cheetos commercials,” Lottie said. “Or was that before your time?”

“I remember the character from a video game. He was orange and white and wore dark glasses and a black beret.”

“That’s him. He called himself Mr. Cool. He was supposed to be a beatnik.” Lottie sighed wistfully. “You probably don’t know what a beatnik is.”

Mr. Cool
? Why did that ring a bell?

“One of my boys—I think it was Karl—dressed up as Chester Cheetah for Halloween one year.” She chuckled at the memory. “He could imitate that lazy, hep-cat voice perfectly. ‘
I’m too cool to fool.
’”

Wait. I’d heard that phrase, and very recently. But when? Where? Who? I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to stimulate my memory cells.
Mr. Cool, Mr. Cool. Come on, brain. The clock is ticking.

I was getting something, a sliver of a conversation I’d had yesterday…with the Urbans!
“We’re too cool to fool.”
Yes! That was it. Jess had used that phrase Saturday morning, after I’d confronted him and Ross about their phone-booth prank and the sign on Sybil’s skirt.

“Why do you want to embarrass her?”
I’d asked them, after hearing about the joke they’d played on Sybil.
“What has she done to you?”

“Nothing,”
Jess the Mess had said,
“and that’s the way we want to keep it. We’re too cool to fool. Hey, Ross. Let’s get her again.”

“Dude, what should we do?”
Ross had asked.

“You’re asking me? Come on, Mr. Cool, you’re the one with the ideas.”

I tucked the cassette inside my purse and slung the strap over my shoulder. “There has to be a connection between this tape and the Urbans, Lottie. I heard Jess refer to Ross as Mr. Cool, and he even used that
too cool to fool
catch phrase, and that’s just too coincidental. Maybe Sugar Shackup is their mother, or maybe Conrad produced the flick. All I know is that if I don’t find a Beta player soon, I’m going to explode from curiosity, and that won’t be a pretty sight. Freckles all over the ceiling—”

“Get going,” Lottie said with a chuckle, giving me a gentle push.

I hurried up the aisle toward Chet Sunday’s booth, hoping the set with his electronic equipment was still there. But when I rounded the corner at the top of aisle two, I could see from that distance that the
Make It Easy
set had been stripped down to the backdrop and the camera equipment. Chet had stuck around, though, standing center stage beside a businessman in a black suit who was speaking through a microphone to a sizable crowd.

I spotted Serpent Sue and edged in beside her, trying to find out what was going on. She glanced down at me and bared her fangs in recognition. No lipstick on them today. “You couldn’t stay away, either, huh?” she asked, turning her wistful yet somehow pathetic gaze back to Chet.

“Are you kidding? A free chocolate buffet couldn’t have kept me from attending.” I nodded toward the stage. “What’s going on?”

“Didn’t you hear the announcement earlier? The president of Habitation Station is presenting Chet with an award.”

“For what?”

She waved away my question as a triviality. “Saving the planet or something.”

Saving the planet. Wow. Quite a feat for a television personality. “I must have been outside when the announcement was made. Are you sure the award isn’t for humanitarian of the year?”

“No, it had something to do with the planet. Maybe Planet Hollywood?”

“When did the speech start?”

“Five minutes ago.” Sue heaved a lustful sigh. “Look at Chet up there. Isn’t he just too yummy? I can’t get enough of him, although I sure would like to try. Hey, maybe we can form a Chet Sunday fan club. I’ll bet he’d really go for that. What do you think? Should we ask him?”

“Actually, I’m working on a murder investigation.”

“Really? Are you a cop?”

“No, I’m just helping a friend.”

“So why do you need to see Chet?”

“To see if I can borrow his tape player.”

She waggled her finger at me. “This investigation is about Sybil Blount’s death, isn’t it? I had a feeling she didn’t pull that lid shut on herself.”

Okay, time to move on.

With Chet otherwise occupied, I went around behind the set to see whether the electronic equipment was still there. Instead, I found a member of his TV crew loading a crate onto a dolly.

“Looking for someone, baby?” He was chewing—or should I say smacking—a stick of spearmint gum, which I could smell from four feet away. He had a stocky build, a big beer belly, a shaved head that showed off the overhang of his low Neanderthal forehead, and an ugly lizard tattoo up one side of his neck. He was dressed in a brown jumpsuit with the words
MAKE IT EASY
on the front. I would have added to that phrase:
TO PUKE
.

“Bet you’re waiting for Chet, am I right? Yeah, he’s a popular guy, our Chet, so’s you might wanna take a number…or you could take your chances with Lizard Lover Luke.” He used a fat thumb to point to himself, wiggling an inch-thick eyebrow. “That’s me, if ya didn’t know. Lizard Lover Luke at Yahoo-dot-com.”

“Thanks, um, Lizard, but I just wanted to check out Chet’s equipment.”

“You and every other chick in this building,” he said with a snicker.

“His
electronic
equipment,” I said with a scowl. “I came across an old movie and I’m looking for a Beta cassette player so I can preview it. I thought I remembered that Chet had one for the show today.”

“He’s got one, but you’ll have to ask Chet about using it. He brings all his own electronic stuff with him, and it’s already been loaded into his big RV. It’s sitting out at the loading dock right now.”

“Terrific,” I muttered.

“Listen, if you ask Chet real nice, he might give you a private screening. He’s got quite a set up in that RV—leather sofas, big-screen high-def TV, full bar, mood lighting—the works. He travels everywhere in it. Had to cost him some big bucks, I’ll tell ya that.”

“A private screening? I thought Chet was all about being a decent guy.”

“Sure, he’s a decent guy. No need to get yourself in a stew, baby. I ain’t insinuating anything’s gonna happen that you don’t want to happen. But I ain’t saying he doesn’t have some fun along the way, either. Look, it can’t hurt to ask him, can it?”

“Sure. Thanks for the help.” Private screening. Yeah, right. The only way I’d watch
Chester Cheater
was alone. But even if Chet agreed to let me use his tape player, I’d still have to wait until the end of his award ceremony, and time seemed to be moving at warp speed. But what choice did I have? Thank goodness for that cocktail party. One hour could make all the difference.

When I rejoined the audience, Chet was giving an acceptance speech. I glanced at my watch, dismayed to see that it was almost four thirty.

“I would like to tank you again, Mr. Pelliman, for bestowing this award on me. I accept it with great honor and vow to continue my efforts to make this great country of ours a cleaner place for us to live.”

Cameras flashed and the audience clapped as the Habitation Station president shook Chet’s hand. I immediately moved toward the stage to catch Chet before he left, but his fans were faster, quickly forming a line in front of me. Serpent Sue was third, so I sidled up beside her and began to chat as if we were longtime friends, hoping to casually insert myself behind her without causing a rebellion in the ranks.

“I hope Chet appears here next year, don’t you?” I said in a bubbly voice, as if that had been our ongoing topic of conversation.

Serpent Sue turned to look in both directions, as though she didn’t know where those words had come from.

“
Psst.
Down here.”

“Oh, there you are.” She patted the top of my head. “You’re so short I didn’t see you.”

Height remarks made me incredibly fractious, but since I needed to latch on to her I tucked away my comment about her Amazonian stature and gave her a smile.

“I don’t know if Chet will ever come back to our convention,” Sue said sadly, her bright pink lips wilting like an aging tulip. “With Sybil gone and all. I mean, say what you will about her, she was the driving force that got him to come.”

Hearing grumbling from the troops behind me, I knew it was time to make my move or be ousted. There was no worse foe than a queue of women who’d been cut in front of one time too many. I drew Sue down and said quietly, “If
you
ask Chet, he might come.”

Her fangs came out in full force. “You think?”

“And if we
both
ask, there’s no way he’ll refuse.”

“That’s a super idea!” she effervesced, and tried to link her arm through mine, but gave up when she discovered she’d have to bend sideways. So she put her arm around my shoulders instead and we stepped forward as one. I glanced around at the angry army behind me and shrugged, as if to say,
Out of my control. Sorry.

They didn’t believe me, and I didn’t have time to care.

“Hi, Chet,” Sue said eagerly, squeezing her arms against her boobs to make them look bigger. “Remember me? Sue Antioch? From Chicago?” She smiled, revealing those feral eyeteeth, and instantly there was a glimmer of recognition in his gaze.

“I remember you, Sue. And you,” he said, pointing at me, “are Nikki’s friend…Ruby.”

“Abby.”

“Whatever. Do you ladies have someting for me to sign?”

“Did you hear that?
Someting
,” Sue said to me, running her hand down Chet’s arm, making sure he had a great view of her cleavage. “I just adore your Russian accent, Chet.”

“I’m from Croatia, but tank you,” he said politely.

I tried to give Sue a smug smile, but she was thrusting her pen and a piece of hotel stationery at him and paying no attention to me.

“Oh, Chet, you absolutely have to come back to our convention next year!” she gushed, nudging me in the ear with her elbow.

“We’ll be totally devastated if you don’t,” I added, trying to match her enthusiasm.

“Well,” Chet said slowly, eyeing the V in her sweater, “I’ll have to tink about it.”

Sue knew exactly how to start that process. She lifted one shoulder to her chin, arched one eyebrow provocatively, and pouted her lips à la Marilyn Monroe. “What can we do to bring you back, handsome?”