Several Deaths Later Read online

  Ed Gorman

  Several Deaths Later

  ***

  The popular game show "Celebrity Circle" is something of a graveyard for show-biz mediocrities, so Tobin, the five-foot-five movie critic with the fiery hair and the equally fiery temper, is less than thrilled to accept a guest stint as the show films a week's worth of broadcasts aboard an ocean liner. But Tobin's career has hit the skids since he solved his TV partner's murder (Murder on the Aisle, 1987); money is money, and besides, he gets a free cruise in the bargain.

  But someone on board has more in mind than fabulous prizes, and Ken Norris, the smarmy emcee of "Celebrity Circle," turns up with a knife in his back. The Captain blames Cindy McBain, the young secretary from Kansas City in whose room the victim's body was discovered. Although Tobin finds her wearing nothing but a robe covered in Norris' blood, he thinks she is innocent, if less than pure-and he swears his belief has nothing to do with her incredible body or her enthusiastically expressed affection for celebrities.

  ***

  From Publishers Weekly

  Gorman scores another hit with this witty, fast-paced mystery. Tobin (Murder on the Aisle), semipermanently drunk movie critic and ex-TV star, is the guest panelist on Celebrity Circle, a TV game show being taped on a cruise to the Virgin Islands. The ship is barely out of port when the show's host is murdered in a cabin while awaiting beautiful, starstruck Cindy McBain. Next, a reporter for Snoop magazine and a private investigator are killed. The ship's captain asks Tobin to help with the investigation and allows him to search the victims' belongings. Tobin finds a photo of a woman whose face has been obliterated and two old, seemingly unrelated newspaper clippings. And when the word "payday," which is used frequently in the reporter's notebook, is mentioned to the stars, each behaves suspiciously. Tobin sets a trap for the killer and then fails, in a hilariously funny scene, by capturing everyone. Despite its lighthearted spirit, this novel, like a movie from Tobin's favorite genre, is full of characters with twisted motivations and dark passions. Gorman successfully blends screwball comedy with film noir.

  ***

  P. (heroic scan-finding & OCR) & P. (formatting & proofing) edition.

  ***

  For Brian DeFiore

  who proves that good editors can also be good friends

  1

  TUESDAY: 10:43 P.M.

  It was while she was slathering her rather nice twenty-eight-year-old body with a bar of moisturizing soap that she got the idea for the letter and she started composing it immediately. Not literally, of course-she was after all taking a shower, and writing underwater was a trick she'd never mastered-but figuratively. Figuratively she started immediately.

  She'd use her best stationery-the baby blue with the monogram at the top-and she'd write with the special Cross pen her mother had given her for her last birthday and she'd send the letter to Aberdeen, the plump secretary she worked with at the life insurance company-Aberdeen sort of lived vicariously through her. The letter would read:

  ***

  I don't know if you remember the TV show several seasons back called "High Rise" but I just thought I'd let you know that its handsome star (now host of the game show "Celebrity Circle"), Ken Norris, can rise just as high as you might think (if you get my drift).

  Aberdeen, it's my first night on the St. Michael cruise ship, and I'm already in love with a TV star-and I think he's really interested in me, too! More sordid details later!

  ***

  Then she'd add, as a tease: "But please don't tell anybody!" knowing that with Aberdeen's tendency to blab, she'd probably do everything but announce it over the PA system so that the entire company would hear about it.

  Cindy McBain went back to slathering.

  Much as she was excited, she was nervous. Right outside her bathroom door sat TV star Ken Norris himself. Waiting. For her. Cindy was staying in what they called a Mode 4 cabin aboard the gigantic superliner, which meant it had the same sort of severe look the motel rooms of her business college years did, which meant that all Ken Norris had to amuse himself with were those glossy but boring magazines they left in every room. Fortunately, he was pretty drunk-he'd sort of been babbling, matter of fact; and maybe he was taking a short nap.

  Cindy had insisted on the shower. She wanted her one and only night with a TV star to be perfect. And that's why she kept slathering, because a TV star like Ken Norris (my God, was he handsome!) would be used to women who served themselves up like pastries. And a lot of work went into pastries. A lot!

  As she tilted her head back, letting the water blast at her face, she congratulated herself again for being sensible, for mentioning right in the middle of a kiss what a stickler she was for protection, given all the grave diseases around these days. And promptly he'd waggled a little plastic box at her that listed all the scientific stuff that had been sprayed on to this particular form of latex protection. Why, this stuff would do everything except kill crabgrass!

  So, feeling safe now, and feeling clean now, she started to step from the shower, knowing that he was probably tired of waiting for her. The last she'd seen of him, he'd been sitting on the cramped built-in red couch in a black dinner jacket, pouring some more scotch into a drink he said looked "too much like a urine specimen. I like 'em a little darker than this." And looking so dreamy saying it!

  She knew that men liked women's hair wet so she didn't do anything more than dry it with a towel and wrap the towel turban-style around her head. Then she stood naked in front of the steamed-over mirror and wiped the critical areas clean so she could get a quick appraisal of herself. For a Kansas City girl who'd never slept with a TV star, she looked-why be unbecomingly modest?-pretty nice. In fact, very nice.

  She checked one breast and then the other. They had begun to sag a teensy bit, but sag at least in an interesting way, and then she checked her bottom which had begun, but not so interestingly, to droop, and then she checked her neck, which bore not a trace of impending middle age. She had the neck of a sixteen-year-old.

  She was imagining how her second letter to Aberdeen would open when she thought she heard something drop just outside the bathroom door.

  ***

  Dear Aberdeen,

  Don't tell anybody, but he's asked me to come visit him in Hollywood!

  ***

  He hadn't of course asked her any such thing. But imagine if he did! Imagine if Aberdeen blabbed that throughout the insurance company! Imagine if she got to tell that story at her ten-year high school reunion, which, after all, was coming up in ten months.

  Her only concession to modesty was a white terry-cloth robe that smelled cleanly of fabric softener and matched in color and texture the towel on her head. She knew she wouldn't have them on long, anyway.

  They'd be heading right for the bed. He'd been ready to go. All ready.

  She opened the bathroom door.

  The first thing that surprised her was the darkness. He'd apparently turned off the light.

  The second thing that surprised her was the quietness-just the soughing and roll of the ocean and the distant sound of a disco band.

  The third thing that surprised her was that he said nothing. She shuddered, recalling how, at an insurance convention in Las Vegas she spent the night with this guy who'd taken great delight in jumping out of the shadows and scaring her. Maybe Ken Norris was like that!

  The fourth thing that surprised her was when she tripped. It was one of those things you see the Three Stooges do-your arms flailing, your mouth dropping open, your head kicking back-and then you land right on your tush.

  Her head landed right next to his head.

  She said, "God, you really scared me. You get sleepy or something?"

  Nothing.

  "I hope
you didn't see me trip. I must've really looked stupid."

  Nothing.

  He just lay there in his dinner jacket, his handsome head turned handsomely toward her.

  "Wouldn't you be more comfortable on the bed?" she said.

  Then she got this horrible thought.

  Maybe he'd been a lot drunker than she'd realized and had simply keeled over. What kind of letter would that inspire to Aberdeen? She'd really have to embroider that one to make it sound like anything at all.

  "Why don't you let me undo your tie?" she said. "Maybe that'll make you feel better."

  The waves; the roll of the massive ship; the scent of ocean; the cry of birds; her breathing and the wet smell of her hair; and moonlight through the tiny cabin window-she realized then that she was in a place alien to her Kansas ways.

  It was because of the moonlight that she finally saw how awkwardly he was positioned on the floor. She just started sobbing softly to herself because it was so ridiculous, just so ridiculous.

  And it ruined utterly-utterly-any sort of decent letter at all to Aberdeen.

  Any sort of decent letter at all.

  2

  11:02 P.M.

  Tobin, thanks to the largess of the game show "Celebrity Circle," was spending the cruise in a Mode 5 cabin, which meant he enjoyed the perks of a double bed, a bureau in which to put his underwear with the ragged elastic and the socks that never seemed quite to match, and a somewhat large mirror above the bureau, in which he could assess what forty-two years, red hair, alcohol, any number of fistfights, and the curse of being only five had done to him.

  From the Parade deck he heard the sounds of a band that was made up of lounge lizard rejects from New York-he knew this for sure because they'd bored him in any number of night spots-four guys who all wanted to be Bert Convy when they grew up.

  Or was he being unfair, as he was so often unfair? He decided probably, and he decided to hell with it, and went back to staring at the TV screen.

  Thus far he'd not had the idyllic cruise the brochure promised-all that deck tennis, all those voluptuous girls in string bikinis, all those stout chefs pointing to banquet tables filled with colorful decadent food of every kind-no, he'd not had the kind of vacation the brochure wanted you to have, and it was nobody's fault but his own.

  The problem was, he was behind in his viewing. Daily, Tobin was bombarded with five to ten VHS videotapes that he'd supposedly view and review for any number of publications. And God, was he behind. Not only had he not seen the new Scorsese; he had yet to see the new Stallone. Not only had Taylor Hackford been overlooked-so had that most celebrated of hacks, Herbert Ross.

  Even at this early stage, the voyage had consisted of getting ready to tape segments of "Celebrity Circle" and then immediately dashing back to his cabin for endless goblets of white wine, a cigarillo that he inhaled only occasionally (one couldn't really count this as smoking, could one? Could one?), and grinding through tape after tape on his VCR.

  He had learned long ago-and thank the cinema gods for this-to view videos the way New York editors read slush. (Read the first two pages and then start skimming.) All you needed to do was keep your thumb close by the Fast Forward…

  Amazing how accurate your review could be even though you'd maybe watched-at most-twenty minutes of a ninety-minute film. But then how tough was it to predict the plot of a picture called Alien Invaders or Razor Killer?

  ***

  Thundergirls was the name of the video he was watching now.

  The biggest problem of the whole process was, of course, staying sober. Easy to keep guzzling and to be drunk before you knew it.

  Which is what had happened tonight.

  He was potzed enough that even the plot line of Thundergirls was difficult to follow.

  It seemed to go something like this: there were these three roller-derby girls who were plucked from earth by some strange force and pressed into battle against this creature who lived in a mountain that erupted Vesuvius-like about every five minutes (actually it was the same bad piece of animation played over and over). Or something.

  To be perfectly honest, all he cared about was their breasts anyway.

  The girls couldn't act (two of them could barely form words), they couldn't move, but by God could they jiggle. They could jiggle wonderfully, marvelously, magnificently, and so what if it was a tatty little picture made by sleazy and cynical morons? By God, it couldn't be all bad, not with breasts like these.

  And it was then he realized (a) just how drunk he was and (b) what a great review he could write of this if only his sober courage matched his drunken inspiration.

  What if he did a review of Thundergirls that said right up front that it was a terrible, incompetent, dull picture but that it was filled with gorgeous breasts? Then he'd proceed to rate the three girls on exactly the basis they should be rated-their looks.

  Laughing out loud, already hearing "Sexist!" cried by a chorus of female editors and readers alike, he leaned over, actually sort of collapsed to the right, looking for more wine, and discovered that he had no more wine.

  No more wine!

  He could no more view videos without wine than he could without a Fast Forward button on his remote control.

  He would have to wobble aft and get himself another bottle.

  Then he stood up and felt the room spin. Good Lord. He needed air, fresh air, and badly and now. He left his room immediately.

  What he ended up doing, first thing, was strolling about thirty feet down the deck and barfing over the side.

  He was careful to lean out as far as he could-there were after all four other decks below him-and in the wind the stuff was rather like orange confetti against the silver moonlight, not unpretty at all.

  Then, feeling not only better but infinitely more sober, he began thinking that, after a few blasts of the mouth spray he always carried with him, he might stop in the lounge, have a diet 7-Up, and try his luck. Lay off the wine a bit. And definitely lay off the videos for the night.

  A definite spring came into his step; it was, after all, May, wasn't it? And he was aboard a vast and expensive cruise ship in the Pacific, wasn't he? And however much a shit he'd been in the past (whenever he got drunk, he inevitably began thinking of all the ways he'd let down his children, his ex-wife, various girlfriends, his parents, and at least six or seven million other people on the planet)-however much of a shit he'd been in the past, there was no reason to punish himself any more tonight, was there?

  No, not any more tonight.

  A definite spring came into his step. A definite one.

  3

  11:06 P.M.

  Cindy didn't realize he'd been stabbed until she got him completely rolled over and then got up and turned on the lights and saw the knife sticking out of his chest and the squishy circle of red blood widening with each passing moment.

  What struck her first was the ridiculousness of it all. She knew, at least according to all the movies she'd seen, that she was (a) supposed to scream, (b) run terrified from the cabin, or (c) faint.

  But actually what she was thinking of was what a wonderful letter this would make to Aberdeen.

  ***

  Dear Aberdeen,

  By now you've probably heard about the murder of that handsome TV star Ken Norris.

  Can you keep a secret? He died in my cabin during the cruise. In fact, I was in the shower just before we were supposed to-

  Well, I suppose you can fill in that particular blank for yourself, can't you, Aberdeen?

  I can't tell you the terrible sadness I feel. Ken and I had become extremely close during the evening we'd spent together. He'd shown me the photos in his wallet (of his 1958 red Thun-derbird and his house in Malibu) and I'd told him all about the insurance company and how you and I suspected our supervisor, Mr. Flan-nagan, of being an embezzler and everything.

  But please, Aberdeen, respect my feelings. Please keep this our secret.

  Yours sincerely,

 
Cindy

  ***

  Aberdeen would be on the company's PA system for sure with this one, and what fame it would be for Cindy. How she'd sparkle among the drab people. A Pacific cruise turning into the murder of a TV star right in her own cabin. It was like Nancy Drew with sex added.

  Then she heard the noise behind her, just outside the bathroom, and realized that someone was in the closet next to the bed.

  This time she did scream.

  This time she did start to feel faint.

  She had just reached the cabin door and the corridor when she heard the closet open. Curiosity forced her to turn around for at least a glimpse of the person emerging from behind the racks of Cindy's clothes.

  Cindy gasped.

  You couldn't tell if it was a man or woman. A black snap-brim fedora and heavy black topcoat with a collar that touched the edge of the hat rushed from the closet into the moonlight and then pushed past Cindy.

  "You killed him!" Cindy shrieked. "You killed him!"

  But the figure kept moving, not running exactly, just moving steadily away from the closet and out of the cabin.

  Cindy knew better than to grab for the person. She did not want to end up the way Ken "High Rise" Norris had. For one thing, she'd be dead. For another, she wouldn't be able to write Aberdeen a letter about any of this.