A Talent for Murder (25 page)

Placenta sat on the sofa next to Polly without taking her eyes off the screen. The images, in poorly lit black-and-white, revealed a man and a woman methodically removing each other’s clothes. The film quality was atrocious, and the camera didn’t move with the action. But there was sound. And the noises that Polly and Placenta heard were ones usually reserved for the intimacy of a bedroom.

Polly looked away for a moment and fixed her eyes on Placenta, who looked at Polly and laughed. In a moment, they were both hysterical with amusement, as if they were kids spying on an older sibling’s date. “Wait! What was that?” Polly said, and listened more closely. “Turn up the sound.”

“Steven! Oh yeah, Steven, baby!” a woman’s voice cooed.

“Miranda, you fox,” the man’s voice responded.

“Steven?” Polly cried out.

“Miranda?” Placenta screeched.

Tim came into the room. “Whatcha watchin’?”

* * *

Lush Hour finally arrived and Placenta opened the first bottle of Veuve. She poured three flutes and served Polly and Tim before taking a long swallow from her own glass. “This has been the longest day of my life!” she said. “Don’t expect me to cook tonight.”

Polly rolled her eyes, then raised her glass. “I trust you both know what we have in our hot little DVD player. That’s right. The keys to the kingdom!”

“The Golden Chalice,” Tim said.

“The Holy Grail,” Placenta added.

“It’s what Lisa called ‘the treasure map,’“ Polly continued. “This absolutely boggles my mind. Steven and Tiara seemed like an ideal couple. But we’ve just watched six films with six different contestants, and one horn dog named Steven having assignations with all of them in their dressing rooms!”

“Whoever edited the tapes knows how to build suspense!” Placenta said. “The cuts of Steven arriving at the studio, then skulking around the hallways, before knocking on Taco Bell’s door, then Amy Stout’s, then Ped-Xing’s, and playing casting couch. They’re really well done!”

“I know this is Hollywood, and I’ve seen just about everything there is to see, but for crying out loud, the backstage intrigue at
I’ll Do Anything to Become Famous
is more scandalous than
Desperate Housewives
and
Days of Our Lives
combined!”

“We’re dead,” Tim moaned. “We’re all
The Man Who Knew Too Much
. Obviously, there are people who know that these discs exist. Lisa. Michael. Miranda. Thane and Danny must have known, too. That’s probably why they’re dead. Now Michael knows exactly where they are. Someone’s going to come after us, and there’s nowhere to hide.”

“That’s why we have security,” Polly said. She stood up and walked to the intercom, and summoned Sergeant Sandy into the house.

“We should go to the police,” Placenta said.

“And say what, that we found someone’s homemade porn?” Polly answered. “Long before Rob Lowe and Pammy Anderson and Tommy Lee filmed their boring smut, do-it-yourself triple-X-rated videos have been a ubiquitous part of Hollywood family mementos. The way families used to film little Ashley’s piano recital, or little Gregory’s Little League game. Everyone does it. Anyway, all the people in
Anything Goes
are of legal age. They looked to me as if they were all very much consenting adults.”

“But Steven obviously took advantage of them,” Tim said. “They probably promised to do something for him in exchange for him doing something for them. Quid pro quo can still mean sexual harassment.”

“It’s an arrangement as old as Hollywood, dear,” Polly said. “And, as far as we know, no one has filed a complaint.”

“One could package and distribute this like a
Girls Gone Wild
DVD and be financially set for the rest of one’s life,” Tim said.

Polly raised her eyebrows. “How much do you think we could get?”

Tim looked at his mother. “Six or seven big ones.”

“Millions?” Polly perked up.

“Bullets to the head!” Tim sassed.

Placenta tsk-tsked. “If you hadn’t lifted those damn discs from Lisa’s apartment in the first place we would not be in this mess!”

“How did I know that
Anything Goes
was code for how far the contestants had already gone to try to win
the game and achieve fame? Sleeping with the host is like sleeping with the boss at the office! So tacky!” Polly scoffed.

Sergeant Sandy knocked on the open door and stepped into the room. She stood with her thumbs hooked over the waist of her uniform pants. “Yes, ma’am?”

Polly offered Sergeant Sandy a glass of champagne, which she declined. Polly said, “Our houseguest is gone for good. He must not be allowed onto the estate again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sergeant Sandy said with a curt nod. “He already told me that he wasn’t coming back.”

Polly continued. “And we’d better ramp up security.”

A glow appeared in Sergeant Sandy’s eyes. “Yes, ma’am. I need to be briefed. What’s the nature of the situation?”

Polly took another long swallow from her glass and passed it to Placenta for a refill. “Let’s put it this way, the Terminator—and I don’t mean our charming Austrian governor—may be on his way over to blow us all to smithereens.”

An unusually agitated Placenta interrupted. “What Polly means is, we’ve suddenly found ourselves in a potentially deep ditch of doo-doo.”

Polly shot her a stern look. “That’s putting it succinctly. It appears that we’re in possession of something that other people want, and we think that they’ve already killed two other people to get hold of it.”

Sergeant Sandy asked, “Do I have to play twenty questions? Is it the Renoir in the living room? The Emmys over there?” She pointed to the lighted glass shelves. “Your flashy jewelry? You shouldn’t wear so much in public.”

“It’s a DVD of
Anything Goes,”
Placenta said.

Sergeant Sandy made a face. “Not that Bing Crosby
piece of dung? Excuse me. I know that your friend Mitzi Gaynor is in that piece of crap. Er, excuse me again.”

Polly made a “pffft” sound. “No, what we have are DVDs that are labeled ‘Anything Goes,’ but they aren’t the movie. At least not
that
movie. They’re copies of security camera coverage of some very private encounters in the Sterling Studios dressing rooms. We obtained them accidentally, and now someone is out to get them back. I’d oblige if I knew the rightful owner. But it seems as though there are at least two people—Michael and Miranda—who are after them. I’ll bet Dead Danny was too.”

Tim looked at Sergeant Sandy and said, “This could be really dangerous. If the wrong person gets hold of the DVDs … there are six discs … they could ruin careers, or make zillions of dollars selling them on eBay, or… But to get the discs, they have to come here. They’d have to go through Polly and Placenta and me, and you too. As I said, we’re dead.”

“This is the one time that having a police detective boyfriend is not going to help,” Polly said. “Randy would be furious with me for taking something from a crime scene.”

“You stole the discs?” Officer Sandy said.

“No!” Polly protested. “Polly Pepper doesn’t have to steal anything! She’s rich and famous and fans give her tons of useless garbage for free.”

“Didn’t stop Winona Ryder,” Sandy said.

“I’m not a klepto! I merely borrowed an old movie. Or what I thought was an old movie,” Polly said. “And please don’t compare me with a talented young actress and friend who made a stupid mistake, and will probably have that sorry business brought up in her obituary.”

“Randy would insist\ that you take the evidence to the police,” Placenta said.

“But you can’t do that without getting yourself in trouble,” Sergeant Sandy said. “And if he knew that you had this material and didn’t turn it in, he’d be in trouble for aiding and abetting, or some such thing. I don’t know exactly how that works, but I’m sure that he’d never speak to you again.”

Sergeant Sandy rubbed her jaw, as if she were stroking a beard, as she thought of a plan of action. Then, transforming herself from subservient employee to a takecharge military field marshal, she ordered, “The first thing you’ve got to do is get those discs out of the house. Give them to me and I’ll stash them safely at my place.”

Polly thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble. Tim will take them to our safe-deposit box.”

Tim nodded. “In the morning, when the bank opens. But in the meantime, what if someone tries to steal them?”

“No one will get past me and Dak. I’m calling her in for backup,” Sergeant Sandy replied. “Next, I want a list of all the people on the surveillance tape and anyone who may know about the discs. Everyone is a potential suspect. Finally, I need to watch the DVDs myself.”

Tim said, “I wouldn’t mind watching ‘em again. Especially three and six. Ped-Xing has more talent than I gave him credit for, if you know what I mean.” He sniggered. Sergeant Sandy did not. “They’re actually more funny than sexy. I mean, especially since we know all the people. There’s definitely a reason why Steven was a model. He still has the goods! His partners in the films may have been sleeping with him to score points
on the show, but it couldn’t have been that difficult, if you know what I mean.”

Sergeant Sandy looked sternly at Tim and said, “No! I do not know what you mean! When someone in authority takes advantage of his position, that’s never acceptable. I don’t care how consenting the subjects are. It’s wrong!”

Polly, Placenta, and Tim all looked at Sergeant Sandy with concern.

Tim nodded. “You’re right. Steven should be held accountable.”

Polly returned her attention to Sergeant Sandy. “Dear, I’m starting to become a wee bit disillusioned with Hollywood. It’s all well and good to come to Tinseltown to make an attempt at becoming a household name like me, but if my intuition is correct, one of the contestants on the
I’ll Do Anything to Become Famous
show is either trying to stop these tapes from surfacing because they’re potentially embarrassing, or they want them for personal gain.”

“They’re all caught in the act, so to speak,” Tim said. “Whoever wants these discs enough to kill for them is probably someone who sees dollar signs.”

“I’ve always had things that other people wanted,” Polly sighed. “Talent. Fame. Fortune. Pepper Plantation.”

“Husbands,” Placenta said with an insolent tone.

“We could be killed for something as stupid as having closed-circuit TV evidence of hanky-panky,” Tim said.

Sergeant Sandy seemed to take offense. “No one will be harmed during my watch,” she said with such force and assuredness that Polly, Tim, and Placenta instantly felt at ease. Although Sergeant Sandy probably couldn’t stop so much as an invasion of carpenter ants,
her presence made the family feel more at ease, as though she could somehow protect everyone at Pepper Plantation from whoever might be lurking around.

Polly raised her near-empty glass to Sergeant Sandy. “Cheers! To our knight… er, our knightress? … um, our Lady of Divine Intervention?”

“When Dak gets here, I’ll need a private room in which to view the evidence. By the way, if you have an edited copy, where’s the original?”

Polly, Tim, and Placenta looked at each other. They hadn’t considered that they weren’t the only ones with the material.

“This stuff is usually stored on a hard disc drive,” Sergeant Sandy said. “I suppose whoever maintained the security cameras has the original raw data.”

Tim said, “I guess that would be Sterling Studios’ security department. But wouldn’t it be illegal for them to monitor a dressing room? It’s like spying in a public bathroom.”

Placenta said, “There could be a crazy person in security who wanted pictures of future stars. In fact, what is there to prevent someone at NBC or Disney or MTV from infiltrating dressing rooms for up-close and personal images to sell on the black market? With the way technology is today, if I were a star, I’d want my dressing room on every show scrutinized for bugs.”

Tim shook his head. “If not a Sterling Studios security freak, then how about the show’s producer, Richard Dartmouth?”

Polly was intrigued. “Hmm. Good looking but ruthless television reality show executive, climbing the ladder to success, finds that it takes more than charm to build a career, so he secretly videotapes his contestants.”

“But why?” Placenta said. “They’re not famous. Un-less
cameras were installed to keep an eye on the possibility that someone would cheat—at the game, that is. But how do you cheat at a talent competition, unless you lip-synch to Cher?”

Tim snapped his fingers. “Maybe, since the show is about proving they’ll go to the ends of the universe to win, the cameras were installed to catch anyone who might harm another contestant.”

Polly considered Tim’s suggestion. “But why then would the judges’ rooms also be under surveillance?”

“To protect you from the contestants. One might have held a judge for ransom,” Placenta theorized.

Polly huffed. “So many possibilities. But there is one person who I’ll bet has all the answers.”

Tim and Placenta each simultaneously spewed forth practically everyone in their Rolodex:

“Steven!”

“Michael!”

“Miranda!”

“Ped-Xing!”

“Thane! No, he’s dead,” Tim corrected himself. “Amy!”

Polly quietly poured herself another glass of champagne. “For pity’s sake!” she groaned. “Listen to yourselves! And after all the years of watching
CSI
and
Cold Case
and
Matlock!
We can’t talk to Steven. Heck, even if he knows the discs exist we couldn’t go to him for information. Same with Michael, Miranda, and Ped-Xing. They’re all in the surveillance videos!”

Tim smacked the palm of his hand against his forehead. “Of course! Brian Smith!”

“Duh!” Polly said. “It’s Lisa, for crying out loud! The discs were in her apartment!”

Placenta poured herself another glass of Veuve. “Obviously, we’re going back to jail tomorrow.”

“B
y now, we should have a reserved parking space,” Tim said as he glided the Rolls into the parking lot of the Beverly Hills Police Station. Although it was only ten in the morning, all of the slots were taken. He let Polly and Placenta off at the entrance to the building. “I’ll join you as soon as I can.”