Caught Dead Handed (23 page)

It was time for me to concentrate on the show, on becoming the Gypsy psychic the viewers expected, on solving the unsolvable, predicting the unpredictable, and at the same time selling the sponsors' products.

The theme music played, the witch hat bumper appeared on the screen, and the teleprompter displayed my first commercial of the night. We were off to a good start. A couple of canned commercials, a station promo, my movie intro, and it was time to relax while the first half of
The Witches
ran.

“Want to watch?” Marty asked.

“Not tonight,” I said. “Too much on my mind.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Something really strange happened tonight, and I'm trying to sort it out.”

“Plenty of strange stuff around here lately, that's for sure.”

“Anybody besides me hearing voices?”

“Voices? What kind?”

I described briefly what I'd heard from outside the dressing room. Pete hadn't thought I was crazy. I took a chance that Marty wouldn't think so, either.

“I'm sure it was Janice's voice,” I told her, “but I didn't recognize the man's. It sounded familiar, but I can't quite place it. Of course I never saw either one of them, and George says it couldn't have been Janice, because she's home in bed with a migraine. Any bright ideas? Or am I just losing it?”

“You know,” she said, “you just may be onto something.” She tossed a cover over the camera and sat beside me. “You aren't the only one who's heard those voices.”

“Glad to hear that. Who else?”

She tapped her chest. “Me. It was before you came here. Before Ariel died. I didn't tell anybody about it. I mean, it wasn't a creepy conversation like you heard, but it was . . . odd.”

“What happened?”

“I was looking for some duct tape to secure some wires, and I knew there was some in the control room. I didn't know anyone was in there, so I was surprised when I heard Janice's voice. It sounded like she was arguing with somebody. Arguing about those crystal things Ariel liked to give away sometimes.”

“Did you see who she was arguing with?”

She shook her head. “I don't walk in on arguments. The duct tape wasn't all that important, anyhow. But I did hear the guy's voice, too. He sounded mad. And mean.”

“Do you remember what they were saying?”

“Kind of. The man wanted her to deliver the crystal necklaces instead of mailing them. Said he wanted to be sure the right women got them.”

“And Janice didn't want to?”

“Not at all. It sounded like she was crying. She just kept saying no.”

“Then what happened?”

“Don't know. I had to get back to work. But here's the strange thing. It was Janice's day off. She wasn't even supposed to be here.”

“Did you ever ask her about it?”

“Nope. None of my business.” She looked at her watch. “Oops. Almost time for another commercial. Ready?”

“Yes. But, Marty, do you have any idea who the man was?”

“Nope. Like you said, he sounded familiar. I thought it might be one of Ariel's regulars.”

One of Ariel's regulars.

Of course. That was exactly why the voice sounded familiar to me, too. In fact, I'd heard that voice recently. I was pretty sure it had been the youngish-sounding man who'd said his name was William. The one who was going to get his mother a cat.

Get his mother a cat!

What was the matter with me? The cat he meant to get was O'Ryan! And his name was William!
Willie?
What was his mother's name?
Lena? Short for Marlena?

I looked around the darkened room for Pete. I had to tell him that it was Willie who'd been threatening Janice and that Marty had heard him once, too, talking about delivering the crystal necklaces. But Pete was nowhere in sight, and it was time for me to read the next commercial. I forced a smile, faced the camera, and somehow managed to deliver a more or less sincere pitch for a local auto dealership.

The movie had reached the midway point. Luke and his grandma had managed to put the magic potion into the witches' soup. It was time for Crystal Moon to work her Gypsy magic and solve the problems of the
Nightshades
audience. There was no time to tell Pete what I'd just learned.

“Hello, caller. Your first name and your question please.”

I worked my way through three calls, dreading the reply to that “Hello, caller” greeting each time, fearful that the answering voice would be that of the man I was sure was the long-missing Willie Valen.

Thankfully, all the calls were from ordinary people who wanted advice on love or loss or money. George, whatever else he might be, was an excellent call screener. When it was time for the movie to resume, I told Marty about my suspicion that the caller named William was the man who'd tried to steal O'Ryan and that he might be the one who'd cut Yvette Pelletier's throat and crushed Ariel's hands.

I wanted to tell her that he had probably thrown his own mother down the stairs. But I wasn't ready to go there yet.

“I'm going up to the control room to find Detective Mondello,” I told her. “I'll bring him right back here. I don't like leaving you alone.”

“Don't worry about me, Moon. I'll be fine.”

Her voice wasn't quite as strong and confident as it usually was, though, and I hurried on my way to the control room.

The door was closed, but I could hear male voices.

Should I knock? Or just walk in? Or stand here and listen?

Nope. No more listening at doorways for me. I was afraid of what I might hear. I knocked with one hand and pushed the door open with the other.

Pete and George stood side by side, watching a divided screen set apart from the long bank of monitors showing a range of camera shots. I recognized it as a surveillance monitor. There were four sections, each one displaying a grainy black-and-white exterior view of the WICH-TV property. The parking lot and the street in front of the station were easily recognizable. A few cars moved along Derby Street, and the sidewalk was clear of pedestrians. The cameras mounted on the sides of the building showed no activity at all.

Pete looked up when I entered. “Hi, Lee. Look. George has the outside cameras working again.”

“That's good. Have they found the missing footage?”

“Not yet, but they will,” Pete said. “They took the hard drive apart this morning.”

“Pete, could I talk to you for a moment?” I said.

“Sure. What's up?”

“Could we go back to the studio? Marty's alone there.”

“Of course.” He held the door open for me. “We'll talk again later, George.”

“Sure,” George said. “I'm not going anywhere. Good show, Lee.”

“Thanks for the easy calls, George.”

I kept my voice steady, my tone pleasant, but I really wanted to scream, “George, for God's sake, what is wrong with you? Your brother's here in Salem. He's threatening your sister—or whoever she is. He may be a killer, and you're sitting here, fooling around with stupid phone calls and an old surveillance camera.”

As soon as the door closed behind us and Pete and I were alone, the words came tumbling out. By the time we reached the set, I'd told him about William, the caller who'd promised his mother a cat on the same night that the camo guy had tried to steal O'Ryan, and who'd said his mother's name was Lena, which could be short for Marlena. I told him that I was sure the man was Willie Valen, and that I was sure Janice was in real danger.

We reached the
Nightshades
set, where Marty was pacing between her camera and the star-flecked blue backdrop. It was the only time I'd ever seen the woman look nervous.

“Marty will tell you, Pete. She's heard the same man arguing with Janice, haven't you, Marty?”

Marty repeated the story she'd told me. Pete wrote in his notebook.

I couldn't seem to stop talking, asking questions. “Pete, do you think George even knows that his younger brother is here in Salem?”

“I don't know, Lee.” Pete sounded serious. “But we'll get to the bottom of all this, Willie or no Willie.”

“Who's Willie?” Marty wanted to know.

“When we were in Florida, we found out that George and Janice might have a younger brother named Willie. But nobody seems to know where he is.”

“I wish Ariel was here,” Marty said. “She'd probably be able to figure everything out about this Willie character and solve the murders. Even her own.”

Pete put the notebook down and faced Marty. “What makes you say that?”

“It's kind of weird, really. I worked with Ariel for years, you know? And she always answered the questions from callers with that mystical malarkey talk, like you do, Crystal. I mean, just plain, commonsense answers with some kind of horoscope bull. Nothing anyone with a brain would take seriously.” She gave an apologetic nod in my direction. “No offense intended.”

“None taken, Marty. But what makes you think she could solve the murders?”

“The last month or so, her answers to callers started to get more specific. She started finding lost stuff for them. I mean, telling them exactly where the thing was.” She pointed a finger at me. “Just like you found that lady's watch in her bathroom. How the hell did you do that, anyway?”

“I don't know. I really don't. But what about Ariel?”

“Well, I asked her about it. She was really getting into the witch bit. I mean, she had always
said
she was a witch, but it was part of the act. She didn't really believe it herself. Until all of a sudden, she changed. She could do . . . things. Magic things.”

“What does that mean?” Pete wore his skeptical cop face. “Can you be specific? What exactly did she do?”

“First, it was little stuff—almost like practical jokes. Like she made Rhonda's makeup kit disappear. I don't know how she did it. It was there on Rhonda's desk, like always. Then
poof !
It disappeared. I saw it with my own eyes. Ariel just laughed and wouldn't tell how she did it. Rhonda was really pissed, too, because she never did get it back.”

“Anything else?” Pete asked. “Maybe she just took a magician's course somewhere.”

“That's what we all thought. Then she started fooling around with cars in the parking lot. She just put her hands on the hood of George's car one day, and it started up all by itself, even though the doors were locked. She just laughed that time, too.”

Pete scribbled in his notebook. “And you say her answers to callers were getting more accurate? She was finding things?”

“Not all the time. But she was ‘seeing' the callers more. You know what I mean?”

“No,” Pete said. “I don't.”

“I do,” I said, recalling the times I'd heard Ariel tell a caller, “I see you” doing this or that. “Marty, do you think she was actually seeing them?”

“Maybe.”

Pete snapped the notebook shut. “That's all kind of hard to prove. Listen, Lee. I need to check out a couple of things with George. After the show is over, I'll drive you home.”

“Okay. The movie will be over pretty soon, and I'll take a couple of calls after that.”

I took my place on the couch, and Marty positioned herself behind the camera.

“Marty,” I said, “do you think Ariel was really practicing some kind of magic? Some kind of spells?”

“Looked that way to me. I know it sounds crazy. I'm sure that cop thinks I'm nuts. You ready? Counting. Ten. Nine. Eight . . .”

We'd reached the end of the movie, the part where Luke and his grandmother find the addresses of all the witches in America and plan a kind of “seek and destroy” mission. If the movie were real, would Luke and his grandma have found Ariel Constellation's name on the list? Would they have found and destroyed her?

But life wasn't a movie. Someone had sought and destroyed Ariel, and I might have overheard her killer's confession. Maybe Pete Mondello didn't believe me. Maybe the police department had to ignore things like witches and magic spells. But I didn't. I
knew
Janice was in danger, and if no one else was going to help her, I knew I'd have to.

Somehow I finished the show without messing up.

Still wary about going into the dressing room alone, I decided to change into my street clothes in the cramped ladies' powder room in the station's reception area. I made sure that the cleaning man/security guard was on duty before leaving Marty in the studio, then grabbed my garment bag and said good night to the camerawoman.

“If Detective Mondello is looking for me, would you tell him I'll meet him down by the elevator?”

“Sure thing. Good night, kid.”

Getting undressed in the pink and lavender confines of the tiny bathroom wasn't easy. I stuffed the Gypsy outfit and gold sandals into the garment bag and wiggled into my jeans and sweater. I sat on the purple plastic toilet seat and pulled on my boots. I took a quick glance at the star-shaped mirror, deciding that there wasn't time or space to fix my hair or makeup.

I was about to unlock the door when I heard footsteps. Was it Pete, looking for me? I couldn't be sure. What if Willie Valen was out there? Did he know I'd heard him talking to Janice? Was he waiting for me? I held my breath.

“Hello. Are you all right?”

It was George Valen's voice. Was he talking to me? How did he know where I was? I didn't answer.

“Janice? Is that you? Did I wake you?” His voice was warm, concerned.

He was on the phone, calling his sister. I began to breathe again. But now I had a new problem. Did I come bursting out of the bathroom or stay put? Would Pete come looking for me if I kept him waiting in the downstairs lobby much longer? I sat on the toilet and listened.