"Why don't you just keep out of it, bitch?"
She leaned over and with a great deal of expertise slapped him once very hard across the mouth. You could see tears in his eyes and a pinpoint of blood on his lower lip. "I'll put up with your stupid little girlfriends, Jere, but I won't put up with anything else."
Tobin pulled his eyes away. He did not want to be in this room at this moment. There was a slow and sad and long-standing anger here-an anger about to become rage-one of the worst kind, one borne of humiliation and debasement. There was nothing uglier to see. Nothing.
Alicia turned to Tobin and said, "It was very simple. He had all the power, Ken Norris did. He could go to the syndication company and get any one of us fired at any time. He knew it and we knew it. So we had to pay him ten percent of our salaries to stay on the show." She exhaled silver blue smoke of her own. "Face it, Tobin, without that show none of us would have any career at all. It was worth the ten percent."
Tobin said, "Iris Graves knew that. That had to be the story she was working on. And Sanderson the private detective knew that too. I can understand why one of you would kill them and Ken Norris. But why Kevin Anderson?"
"Because he was sick of the sham," Farris said, slamming his fist on the table. "He was going to talk to the press as soon as he got back."
"So everybody in your group knew this?"
Alicia nodded.
"And apparently," Tobin said, "added Kevin to the list."
"I didn't kill anybody, if that's what you're thinking." His petulance was getting irritating again.
"I think," Alicia said with a kind of defiant dignity, "that Tobin suspects it's me." She smiled at her husband. It was a pleasant smile to see. "After all, dear, I'm the only one with any balls in the family."
"She didn't kill anybody, either," Farris said.
"One of your group did," Tobin said, "in order to prevent the story from coming out."
"It would have made us laughingstocks," Alicia said, her voice quiet again. "It's bad enough to be has-beens but to have to pay kickbacks on TV-you can imagine what the press would have done to us."
Tobin was about to speak when a noise, almost vulgar on the fresh ocean air and on such a sunny day and on such blue water, violated the peace of the cruise ship.
There was no mistaking what it was, the noise.
It was the sound of a gun being fired.
"My God," Alicia said.
But Tobin was already out the door.
39
Six doors away, Todd Ames, looking as if he were preparing for a GQ photo shoot-white button-down shirt, apricot colored ascot, white linen pants, steel gray hair in perfect shape-leaned to the side of Susan Richards's door. He appeared to be in clinical shock.
As Tobin reached him, he saw that. 45 dangled from Ames's left hand. Tobin recognized the weapon as Ames's own. Ames did not seem aware that he held the gun.
Tobin glanced at him, then pushed inside.
The curtains were still drawn. The room stank of bourbon. The bed was a mess. There was the scent of sleep and sweat and vomit. With the door closed, Tobin felt as if he had stepped down into a deep hole that had sealed itself behind him.
She sat curled in a chair. She was naked. There was for the moment nothing erotic about her. Indeed her nakedness was terrifying because it was obviously symbolic of her mental state.
She turned her beautiful aging face to look up at Tobin. She said, "You know the funny thing?"
"No," he said, "no, I don't know the funny thing."
"Prison isn't what scares me."
"What scares you, Susan?"
"The photographers."
"Why do they scare you?"
He wished it were light in here. He wished it did not smell so womb-warm. He wished her eyes did not look so unfocused.
"The way they used to follow Marilyn Monroe around. You remember?"
"Yes."
"They'd get right up to her and she'd start to cry and you could see the panic in her eyes. That's what scares me."
"You killed them, then?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
She laughed. "Tobin, it was the only career I had. Once it came out that I'd had to pay to be on it-"
"God," he said, and sank down onto the ottoman. He leaned back a bit toward the bureau where he could smell the sweet perfume and even sweeter sachet. He liked the female smells and for the first time he became aware of the sexuality of her naked body. He felt ashamed that lust had as always triumphed over compassion.
"What was the gunshot? You trying to kill yourself?"
She laughed and for a moment sounded genuinely delighted. "What, and ruin my makeup? No, I was just trying to get attention, Tobin." She pointed with an elegant hand to a hole in the wall. "I just fired the gun because I thought it would sound good. I had to do something." Then her face grew sad again, like a small girl hearing terrible news, and she said, "You didn't want me to be the killer, did you?"
"No."
"That's very nice of you."
He raised his head again and stared at her. "When the captain comes, don't say anything."
"What?"
"Don't say anything until you've got a lawyer."
"It doesn't matter, Tobin. It really doesn't."
"It matters to me."
"I appreciate that."
Tobin said, "Why kill Sanderson too? Iris Graves had discovered what was going on-Ken Norris demanding a part of your salary-but why Sanderson?"
"Because he was helping the reporter and even if he hadn't wanted to, he would have exposed me."
"They worked together?"
"Yes."
He was about to ask her more but the door creaked open and Captain Hackett put his head inside.
"I just had a conversation with Todd Ames, Miss Richards," Captain Hackett said. "He told me what you tried to do and what you confessed to. Are those things true?"
"Remember what I said about a lawyer," Tobin said. "Yes, Captain," Susan Richards said. "They are true."
"God," Tobin said. "God."
She'd been right, Susan had. He would not have been unhappy to learn that the killer was Jere Farris or Todd Ames or Cassie McDowell or even Alicia Farris. But he genuinely liked Susan Richards. Genuinely.
Captain Hackett said, "I'll be outside, Tobin. You help her get dressed and then bring her out. All right?"
Tobin did the only thing he could do. He nodded.
40
"Forget the part where you think she's crazy."
"Forget it? Why?"
"Because if she's crazy, then people feel sorry for her and if they feel sorry for her, then it's just another story about some pathetic has-been TV star. But if she willfully and coldly set out to do in all these people-ape shit is the word I'm looking for here, Tobin."
"That's two words."
"Whatever. Ape shit is what our readers will do. AGING PRIME TIME QUEEN KILLS TO KEEP HER SHAME SECRET. It needs some work but it's a good peg. You earned your dough, pally."
"Thanks."
"Hey, you get seven grand and you sound miserable."
"I am miserable. I happened to like Susan. And what's this seven grand stuff?"
"Expenses."
"What expenses?"
"I told you already. Phone calls and stuff."
"What's 'stuff?'"
"Jesus, all right. We should be celebrating and we're haggling. Seventy-five hundred then."
"First you said ten, then you said eight, and now you're saying seventy-five hundred."
"Just get some good pictures, OK?"
The editor of Snoop, who probably not only watched "Celebrity Handyman" but liked it, hung up.
Tobin went into one of the ship's eight bars.
41