When he returned to the party room he found two additional guests, "Celebrity Circle"'s producer, Jere Farris, and Cassie McDowell, the thirtyish blond who had played the cute and sweet Ms. Franklin on the recently canceled "McKinley High, USA."
As Tobin reached the dry bar, lighted another cigarillo, and poured himself another glass of diet 7-Up from a big green plastic job that seemed to weigh about eight pounds, Captain Hackett, obviously wanting to break the news in the most efficient manner possible, said, "I'm afraid that Ken Norris was murdered earlier tonight."
Tobin, leaning against the bar, sipping 7-Up and smoking his cigarillo, watched and listened to the various reactions.
Jere Farris, looking almost bankerish in his blue button-down shirt, dark blue slacks, brown belt, penny loafers, and somewhat bookish face, said, "He likes playing practical jokes. Once he got us all up to his hotel room by making us all believe he was going to jump out the window."
Cassie McDowell said, quietly, "The captain isn't fooling, Jere." She brushed a graceful hand back through her bangs. The hand was twitching.
Susan Richards said, bitterly, and apparently to Todd Ames (as if Ken Norris's death were his fault), "I told you this was going to be bad news."
"You're sure this isn't some kind of hoax?" Farris said.
Captain Hackett shook his head. "It's no hoax."
"But who would have done it?" Kevin Anderson said.
Tobin watched each of them carefully and then said, pushing away from the dry bar, "The captain is under the impression that a woman named Cindy McBain did it."
"Who the hell is Cindy McBain?" Todd Ames said. "Has she been on television?"
Tobin shook his head. "Another one of Ken's conquests. Or near-conquests. She insists she was taking a shower for their night of bliss. Then she came out and found the lights out in her cabin and Ken dead on her floor."
"Poor Ken," Susan Richards said. Farris said, "What do you think of her story, Captain, this McBain woman?"
"I don't believe it."
"You think she killed him?"
"Yes." He nodded to Tobin. "She told Mr. Tobin here that she saw somebody hiding in her closet."
"And you believed that, Tobin?" Anderson said. He was getting back into his TV cop role, scorn in his voice.
Tobin had some of his cigarillo. "She might have done it. But it wouldn't make a lot of sense. Why would she kill him?"
Just then Susan Richards started sobbing, her dark hair swinging across her face, her lovely blue eyes vanished now. Ames took her to him and held her very tightly. Tobin noticed that Ames once again looked at his reflection in the window. Ultimately everything was a role and you had to worry about camera angles, even when you were comforting the grief-stricken.
"I want to get good and drunk," Anderson said. Now he was a beer commercial cowboy. There was a swagger in his voice.
There were times when Tobin wanted to take all the actors in the world, put them on an elevator on the ninetieth floor, then cut the cords. All the way down they'd be worrying about how they looked-appropriately frightened? Appealingly dismayed? At least on "Celebrity Handyman" all the non-acting host worried about was whether he pounded nails with the proper end of the hammer.
"This is just crazy," Cassie McDowell said. "It's unreal." She looked at Tobin. At a post-launch party, something like electricity (of a low-voltage type) had passed between them over the lunch-dinner of duck and champagne, and ever since she'd offered him this kind of twitchy eye contact that could easily be confused with nearsightedness. "Don't you think, Tobin?"
He shrugged, sighed. She startled him by coming over to him and sliding her arms around him and then without warning breaking into tears. She leaked through his sport jacket and his shirt to the flesh of his shoulders. Her tears were warm and inexplicably erotic. He wished his feelings were more appropriate to the moment-the game-show host had, after all, been a fellow human being. He tried hard to form an image, of the dead man in his mind and feel some sort of sorrow. But he hadn't liked Ken Norris very much. Their first day shooting Norris had made innumerable on-camera jokes about Tobin's height and then he'd bullied a cameraman till the man had tears in his eyes and then he'd turned his scorn on an effeminate makeup man and then he'd complained aloud, in front of the entire cast, that Susan Richards was drinking again.
"He was no angel, I'll give you that," Susan Richards said now, her tears ceasing. "But he was a damn good host. He really was."
Yes, Tobin thought, he had the looks and demeanor for it. The predatory gaze, the glibness that was almost decadent in its emptiness.
In Tobin's arms, Cassie was calling a halt to her tears too. Apparently tears were doled out in three-minute segments. Like a camera take.
"I'll never forget that Christmas special he did with the handicapped kids," Cassie said, drawing away from Tobin. He realized then why he liked her so much. She was maybe five-two. "He looked so-sincere-when he held those kids on his lap and sang Christmas songs. Even if he did get mad when that kid wet his pants right on Ken's lap." There was a loneliness in her laughter that made Tobin like her even more.
Farris said, "He had a few faults but I'll tell you, he wasn't nearly as cruel as the press said he was. I think they were very unfair to him."
Ames said, "Absolutely. When he dumped his second wife, he had no idea she'd have a stroke a few days later. Yet the press blamed him entirely."
"He wasn't perfect," Susan said again, snuffling. "But he really was a very good host. He really was."
Tobin now watched the captain. Real amusement played in the older man's eyes. The same kind of amusement Tobin felt.
The captain said to Farris, "Will there be a taping tomorrow?"
"God, there'll have to be. We've got so much money at stake here in the crew and equipment. There'll have to be."
"Then who'll be host?" Cassie said. Apparently the formal mourning period was over. Talk, infinitely more passionate, had turned to career.
Farris, who gave every evidence that he too was about to break down, but from anxiety more than sorrow, ran slender fingers through thinning hair and said, "I'll have to let you know in the morning. We can pick up an additional celebrity panelist by using your wife, Todd, if that's all right?"
Todd Ames's wife was the actress Beth Cross, whose canceled series had been "Crime Town."
"She'd be delighted," Ames said, sounding much happier than he should have under the circumstances. He corrected himself at once, drawing himself erect, getting a glimpse of his gray head in the window once more. "I mean, under these unfortunate conditions."
The captain said, "Well, I will continue to question Miss McBain about this evening and meanwhile, I invite you to stay here and have a few more drinks if you wish."
"Poor Ken," Susan said.
"He really wasn't nearly the jerk people thought," Anderson said. Then he smiled manfully. "I always knew it would be a babe who did him in. That old stud sure did get around."
"I think," Cassie said, using one of the lines from "McKinley High, USA"-with which she'd become inextricably associated-"I think all he needed was some good old-fashioned love."
Tobin had seen that promo at least 4,629 times, where Cassie in a clip faced the camera in close-up and said in her squeaky-clean voice, "I think all he needed was some good old-fashioned love." He'd always wanted to barf.
Nobody should be that treacly. Nobody.
9
"I hope my friends can find a few nicer things to say about me when my time comes," Captain Hackett said as he and Tobin walked along the deck back to Tobin's cabin. "You noticed that, huh?"