Mumbo Gumbo (15 page)

I shook my head, trying to imagine a younger Susan, scared about losing her job, working in such insane conditions. She was such a kind soul, it just made no sense.

“Then what? Did Tim help you get your plane ticket?”

“Not exactly. He did something better. He stayed up with me all night and we talked about what we really wanted to be doing with our lives. I mean, his point was so true. Did we really want to make some game show or some vacation travel show the most meaningful thing we would ever do? Tim told me he had a secret dream. He said the only reason he continued to work for Artie was to save enough money to buy his dream.”

“What was his dream?”

“He wants to write historical fiction.”

“Really?”

She nodded, smiling. “He is a really talented guy. He was a history major at Columbia.”

“Tim Stock?”

“Yes. He just needs the money to get to his dream. He wants to buy a house free and clear so he won’t need to make any more payments. He wants to travel to London to do historical research. He needs to save enough money to take five years off and write the novel he’s always wanted to write.”

“Wow. That could take a lot of money, five years and a house.”

“That’s Tim’s dream. He’s been making pretty good money writing television, but it isn’t the big money that sitcom writers get. Nothing like that. And Tim has to have a new car and he likes to date expensive women. But still, he’s been saving little by little. And he told me that night back in Mexico to do what he was doing. Think of my PA work as just a job. Turn it into a way to earn enough to bankroll my dream.”

“What’s your dream?” I looked at Susan, wondering why I never noticed before how serene she was, how positive and peaceful. Maybe she only felt that way outside the studio.

“That was the difficult part, Maddie,” she said, laughing at herself again. “I had no dream. All I wanted was to get into the Directors’ Guild to get my medical insurance covered. Pretty pathetic dream, right? So Tim kept pouring us tequila and orange juice and I tried to concentrate on what my dream should be. And I was still so tense, from my day out on location, I couldn’t stop crying about not having a dream. Finally, Tim told me to close my eyes and imagine the most peaceful place I could think of. And from out of nowhere popped this image of a pasture and a flock of sheep.”

“You’re kidding! That is so weird.”

“It’s bizarre, isn’t it? I mean, I’m a New Yorker. I knew absolutely nothing about sheep. I’d never been on a farm. And you know what, right then and there I told Tim I was going to buy myself a ranch someday and raise sheep.”

“In your peaceful, tequila haze, you were Little Bo Peep,” I said, in awe. “Amazing.”

“I know! But whatever that vision was, whether it was the booze or my nervous breakdown or what, it
made me feel incredibly happy to think about buying those sheep.”

“And then what happened?”

“The next morning I couldn’t even wake up. But I didn’t care. I was fired anyway. I wasn’t in my hotel room all night, so Artie couldn’t find me and do his typical apology with a huge gift. So you’ll never believe what happened. Artie started to panic. He had Greta searching everywhere.”

“Because Artie really felt ashamed after he came down from his raging?”

“Yes. He felt bad. He always felt bad. He was the same guy he always was. But I had changed, Madeline. I was no longer sniffling in my room, cowering, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was sleeping off a night of tequila sunrises in Tim Stock’s bed.”

“So,” I asked delicately, “were you and Tim…?”

“No,” Susan said, laughing again. “No, he let me sleep in the bed. He’s such a great friend. And while I’m sure you have heard that Tim has slept with a lot of women, we never had that in our relationship.”

“So what did Artie do when he couldn’t find you?”

“He went ballistic. I mean, he was in Mexico. Where was he going to find another English-speaking PA. What had he been thinking when he fired me, anyway?” She shook her head. “So Tim was out in the lobby, listening to Artie going nuts and watching Greta come back with her field reports that I wasn’t at the pool and I wasn’t in the restaurant and I hadn’t been in my bed the previous night, that sort of thing. And finally, Tim tells Artie, ‘I know where Susan is.’ And Artie is ready to kill him and Tim says, ‘But I won’t tell you until you agree to make Susan the AD, pay for her to join the Directors’ Guild, and buy her six sheep.’”

“This is too much. And Artie said ‘Okay’?”

“Yep. And that was the start of my flock. I went back to work and when we got home, I found out that Pierce lets some of its students keep their livestock here at the college. I had Artie lined up to pay for them, so I decided to get started right away. I took a course here in sheep.”

“They have courses in sheep?”

“They do. And I took the course and was allowed to bring my sheep here. That was five years ago. To this day, I’ve been saving my money for my dream. And I’m almost there.”

“I’m amazed.” I looked at her and smiled. “I’ve known you at the office, but I had no idea about all of this.”

“It’s funny about people, isn’t it? We all have so many layers. We’re not what you expect.”

“Especially you,” I said, admiring the way Susan had found her own freedom. “And yet, you still work for Artie Herman?”

“Yes, I do. And you know what, he’s never blown up at me after that time. I don’t know if it was how scared he got the next morning when he probably thought he had driven me to suicide, or if it is how much damn money he has to pay every year to keep my flock in feed and to pay for shearing.”

“Artie still pays?”

“Oh, yes. Tim hammered out the details and Artie was happy to sign. He can really be a generous guy at times. Temperamental. But most creative guys are. Only a few days ago, Artie walked into my office and told me his stock portfolio was in trouble. He said he wouldn’t be able to pay for the sheep this quarter. I don’t know if I believe him, so I wrote that note to
Tim. Maybe Artie has just kept paying all these years because he was afraid to cross Tim. Now that Tim is gone, maybe Artie figured he could renege on our deal. And if I don’t pay for my sheep, the school can’t let me keep them here. I’ve worked out the numbers, but I would have to let two of them go.”

“How can you be so easygoing and forgiving?” I asked. My temper runs way too hot to be able to forgive and forget.

“It’s the time I spend with my animals,” she said, smiling. “I love my dogs and I love coming out here. Three mornings a week, I come out and tend to my little flock. Then I drive back into town and work on the show.”

“So I guess
Food Freak
will never feature a recipe for mutton.”

“Maddie!” Susan’s eyes twinkled, or at least her wire-rimmed glasses did. “Let’s not go there,” she said. “You’re ba-a-a-a-d.”

I couldn’t groan. I deserved that.

N
ormally, most of
Freak
’s office staff arrive at work sometime between nine-thirty and ten. Some gogetters are in earlier. They, and the one or two individuals who draw excellent paychecks but have come to discover that their positions serve no earthly purpose on the show, tend to arrive just a hair before nine, the better to impress Artie, who usually pulls his Cadillac onto the lot a few minutes later. At seven-thirty, however, even the most insecure production executive is at home in bed. At this hour of the morning, our side of the studio was a ghost town.

I used my key to unlock the glass door to
Food Freak
’s reception area, and then, once inside, to lock myself in again. No reason to take chances. I turned on the lights and Chef Howie was everywhere, smiling down at me. Chef Howie frying bacon. Chef Howie flipping flapjacks. Chef Howie frappéing a banana smoothie. Gigantic framed posters of Chef Howie filled three walls. As it had been left by the hardworking contestant department the previous night, everything in this room was in readiness for that department’s great daily quest, to sift through hundreds of amateur chefs and find for the show just the right talented home cooks with just the
right telegenic personalities to make it on the air.

I walked past a credenza where an instant camera and ten boxes of film were staged near a section of plain white wall. Pictures would be taken of every hopeful
Freak
contestant, to be attached to his or her application. Across from a large reception desk were rows of black plastic seats with wide arms on one side like college desks. Aspiring contestants were seated here, in groups of thirty, to fill out forms.

I walked across the empty room to one of the stairwells located on either side of the open reception area. Again, I flipped a light switch and this time illuminated the staircase. I had never been the earliest one in the office before, and with each of these steps, I began to wake up the building.

Up on the second-floor landing, I tried a few switches until I found the one that lit up the hallway, and as the fluorescent fixtures buzzed into brilliance, I listened for a moment to the slight tickings and faint hummings that make up the silence in a silent and empty office suite. I walked down the hall, watchful, careful, and thought about Honnett’s directive of not being alone in the building. I hadn’t meant to. I had agreed to never again stay at work after-hours, not alone. But for some reason, maybe from lack of sleep or lack of some basic talent for paranoia, I had forgotten to consider how deserted this floor was likely to be at this early morning hour. Rooting around in my bag, my fingers identified my cell phone by touch, and I grabbed it. I punched the numbers—911—and held the instrument in my left hand like a weapon, my thumb over the Call button, ready to shoot off an instant distress signal should an emergency arise. I looked quickly behind me. No one. Of course not. Damn Honnett.

I pulled the tricky maneuver of unlocking Tim Stock’s office door while keeping the phone in play, alternately glancing over my shoulder into a perfectly deserted hallway and feeling like a perfect fool. I hated this. Always nervous, always second-guessing. But just as I managed to jiggle the old lock and open the office door, I was instantly alert. The overhead lights had been left on. And before I could recall whether I might have left them burning all night, I discovered I had a visitor.

Fate Finkelberg was sitting on a beautiful new rose-colored sofa. Chef Howie’s wife, lying in wait, upon my reward piece of furniture, the ugly brown Herculon monster that clearly figured into my ugly bump-on-the-head memory of the previous night.

“Fate.” What else could one say?

“Oh, Madeline, dear.” She turned to me and smiled. When she used that expression, her thin lips almost disappeared, but the tight line they made did curve upward. “I am so relieved you are an early bird. I had expected to be here for hours before we could chat. I let myself in Tim’s office. I thought I’d get a bit of work done.”

“You have a key?”

“I have all the keys. I’m executive producer.”

“I thought Artie…”

“Well, yes, Arthur has that title, too.” She smiled again. Really, I had been treated to 200 percent more affability in the past minute than in all our previous encounters. “We’re partners, really, Arthur and I. He provides the studio and production staff and so on and so on, and then sells the show and deals with the network assholes, and I provide the star.”

“I see.”

“You should watch the show’s credits, sometime. You’d find them fascinating. I think I may even have them…” Fate deftly flipped open a mammoth-sized three-ring binder that contained about thirty colorful dividers. She quickly came to a page and turned the binder to face me. The paper showed the order of the crawl, that moving list of names that rolls over the final seconds of
Food Freak
each week.

I read the names and noticed the order of importance:

FOOD FREAK

Starring

Chef Howie Finkelberg

Executive Producers

Fate Finkelberg

Arthur Herman

Produced by

Greta Greene

Directed by

Peter Steele

Head Writer

Timothy Stock

Written by

Madeline Bean

Neal Herman

Jennifer Klein

Quentin Shore

“Hey, they put my name in.” I looked up at Fate. “So soon.”

“Susan is very efficient,” Fate said, pulling the large binder back to face herself. “I’ll give her that.” Something in Fate’s voice got colder.

“But, wait, who is Neal Herman? Artie’s son?”

“Um-hmm.”

“I’m so out of it. I’ve never even heard that Artie has a son or that he’s a writer here, too.”

“That’s not all that surprising.”

“Oh?” With Fate Finkelberg, one had to be prepared to measure the depth of sarcasm, drip by drip. “You mean,” I suggested, “Neal Herman doesn’t make his presence felt?”

“Well put,” Fate said, giving me another tightlipped grin. “He’s on the payroll but I don’t think he’s ever made it to the studio. The good news is, he’ll never get in your way, right?”

Fate had such a dog-eat-dog way of looking at the world. I perched on the desk chair and studied her, watching her recross her thin legs in her gold Capri pants, dangling one foot. The foot, like its partner, had been perfectly pedicured in blood-red lacquer and was shod in a gold wedgie sandal, tied up her calf like the ones worn by Roman gladiators. The woman took fashion way past the limit, to be kind about it.

“Did you want to see me, Fate? Or were you just at the studio early and thought you’d use Tim’s empty office?”

Fate arched an almost completely plucked brow. Whatever coloring that brow had originally been blessed with was now a faint memory. A narrow line of dark-blond pencil marked the spot. “We need to talk, sweetie. I need an ally and you’re it.”

“That’s intriguing.”

“Good. This is personal, so I don’t want anything I’m about to tell you to get around. Not even a scent. Do you understand me?”

“Of course.”

“I know you’re one of Greta’s little friends, but I particularly don’t want Greta to get any of this information. Am I clear?”

“Yes.”

“If she does find out, I’ll know it came from you. And then, Madeline, you can kiss good-bye any chance of working in television again.”

I was amazed. They really do say that. How quaint.

“Well, come on,” I said, remembering how tough I needed to be. “Do yourself a favor. Don’t tell me anything at all, Fate. I’m not breaking into your office at seven-thirty in the morning to have a nice private chat.”

“True,” she said, smiling her smile. “Well, here’s the nasty little business. My husband is having an affair with someone at work. I’m not stupid. I know. And I will kill whoever she is. Make no mistake.”

“Fate, hold on.” There was no way I wanted to be hearing this. No way.

“You are about the only one who is safe, Madeline. Howie has been carrying on for at least a month. You’ve only been here a week. Do the math.”

I hate that phrase.

Fate stared at me, expecting me to react to her bombshell of a news flash, but I guess I wasn’t fast enough. She said, “Well? You’re certainly not shocked. Is it that easy to see why Howie would make a fool of me?” Tears literally sprang into Fate’s green eyes.

“Fate, I hardly know you and Chef Howie. Actually,
I
don’t
know you and Chef Howie. I mean, I’m sorry for you if it’s true. But why are you telling me this?”

“Not to get your pity, doll,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue she grabbed off the desk. “I just have to find out who he’s sleeping with. I have to.”

“You don’t know for sure, then,” I said. “Maybe…”

“Maybe dogs sing and pigs fly,” Fate said bitterly. “I know. I know. How can I tell? Well, he’s much happier, for one thing. All of a sudden he got happy.”

Ah, that’s a problem all right. When the husband gets happy, that’s definitely something to worry about. This was the sort of thing that could make a girl glad she wasn’t married. Fate kept her unhappy eyes on me. She needed some reassurance, perhaps. “Maybe he’s just happy about something else. Like he’s enjoying how popular
Freak
has become. His star is rising.”

“Oh, right,” she said, miserably. “Right. He’s a star. And who made him a star? That would be me. I’m such a damned fool, Madeline. I worked and worked to make Chef Howie a household name. Did I tell you we just signed a huge deal with Target for a line of Chef Howie kitchen cleanser? And now he’ll leave me and what have I got left?”

Ten percent of the cleanser money? I couldn’t, of course, say that aloud. Instead I tried to seem interested in her anxiety. “You must have more evidence than Chef Howie’s recent joie de vivre,” I said. “You’re too hardheaded to make all this up over a mood swing.”

“He’s been lying,” she admitted. “I’ve caught him a dozen times. What kind of idiot does he think I am?
He knows he is an atrocious liar. I always find out.”

“What sort of lies?”

Her voice got much softer. “He went away for the weekend. To Santa Barbara. He was going to visit some friends, a chef who just opened a restaurant in Montecito. He knew I couldn’t go because I had already told him I had to fly to New York with Arthur for the network affiliates meeting. When I tried to reach him at the hotel in Santa Barbara, he was never in. They took messages. And then he’d call me back ten minutes later.”

“That’s it?”

“I called him seventeen times, Madeline. Seventeen messages were taken by the desk clerk. Seventeen times Howie returned my call within ten minutes. Don’t you get it? He had paid the hotel desk to hold all his calls. He didn’t want to be interrupted while he was catting around in some fabulous hotel suite with his…” Tears sprang into her eyes once more, and as she dabbed at them, she calmed her voice down. “…with his mistress. I don’t think I can stand this.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure what was going on between Howie and Fate, but she was probably right.

“The thing is, I want to find out exactly who the little bitch is and I want her head on a platter. I am still the executive producer of this show and Howie is bound to his contract for seven years. Until he comes to his senses and crawls back to me, I will be damned if I will allow his little concubine to work in these offices.”

“Who do you think it is?”

“Susan Anderson.”

“What?” I was shocked. “Susan doesn’t seem like—”

“Like what?” Fate interrupted, her eyes angry. “She’s a woman, isn’t she? She’s so sweet and self-effacing I could kill her. What’s with those bizarre T-shirts she wears? And those dogs! She has never worn lipstick in all the days I’ve known her. She’s just all wrong.”

“Well, I think she’s very pretty,” I said, “but I know what you mean. She’s got a more natural kind of look.”

Fate glared at me. She and Susan Anderson could not have been more dissimilar. Could that be a turn-on for Howie? Was Fate even thinking straight? Susan Anderson having an affair with Chef Howie? I didn’t think so. “You must be wrong about this,” I said.

“You think?” she asked. “The weekend Howie disappeared up in Santa Barbara, Susan was supposed to come to New York with Arthur and me. At the last minute, she told us she had a cold and canceled.”

“That could be a—”

“You want more?” Fate cut in. “I was getting worried, as I told you. I kept calling the Four Seasons and I could never get through directly to Howie. Then on Sunday morning, when Arthur and I were at breakfast, I asked him a question I knew he wouldn’t know. He had to call up Susan. He used his cell phone and dialed her right there at the table. It was nine
A.M.
in New York, which is six
A.M.
in L.A. And Susan didn’t answer. She wasn’t at home in her nice warm bed nursing a cold. She was in Santa Barbara having a romantic tryst with Chef Howie!”

I wasn’t so sure. At six
A.M.
, it was a good bet that Susan Anderson and her dogs were out on the farm at
Pierce College, communing with her flock. But what did I know? These were private issues and I had no reason to get involved.

“Anyway,” Fate said, “I just want you to keep your eyes open. If you should see anything going on between the two of them, let me know. I’ve hired a detective, would you believe it? But so far he’s turned up absolutely nothing. It’s a huge waste of money. But he’s still following Howie. I have to know the truth, Madeline.”

“I understand,” I said. “But it may be nothing, Fate. You don’t have that much to go on, after all.”

“There’s more. How can I convince you? It’s little things. He’s happy all the time. And he started doing this goofy little sign-off at the end of each episode of the show. He gives the camera two winks. It’s awful. I’ve told him now a dozen times, it makes him look like he’s got some sort of twitching disease. But he insists on it. Can you imagine that? He’s listened to my advice every second of every day since we fell in love, and now suddenly he comes up with his own gimmick? He winks? I can’t stand it.”