Wanting Sheila Dead (16 page)

“Have you checked the shelters?”

“All of them, and the temporary housing organizations, too. She hasn't been at any of them. This Lily of yours might have been a homeless person, but if she was, she wasn't homeless in Philadelphia.”

“I can't see Sophie Mgrdchian taking in a homeless woman off the street,” Gregor said. “I didn't know Mrs. Mgrdchian personally, except maybe back when I was twelve, but I know these women. I can see them baking all night and passing out bread to people they think need it, but I can't see them taking in strangers.”

“My point exactly.”

“So,” Gregor said. “I guess there's nothing to do but wait for the results of the new set of tests Dr. Halevy has ordered. I asked her if she thought we were going to find foul play, and she wasn't able to give me an answer. I asked her if she knew what was wrong with Sophie Mgrdchian, and she couldn't answer that, either.”

“It's probably going to end up being something natural, or an accident,” David Mortimer said. “But take that stuff. It's all the test results we have on Sophie Mgrdchian, plus all the search results so far on Lily. If you can make something of them, we'd be glad of the help. I'm sorry we're not being more efficient.”

“You're being fine,” Gregor said.

He picked up the papers, and looked at them, and frowned. There really was nothing here. He wished he had something concrete in the old-fashioned sense, like a bullet hole in the ceiling. Then he put the papers down on the desk again.

“Could I ask you a favor?” he said. “Could you get me some information about an incident in Merion.”

“Merion?”

“I think that was where it was.
American's Next Superstar
seems to be filming its new season at my wife's childhood home, and back last weekend there was a shooting at something the show was doing in Merion.”

David Mortimer looked happy. “I know what you're talking about. A girl we think is called Emily tried to shoot Sheila Dunham in the middle of some filming they were doing, or something. Oh, I can get you a lot on that one. And it's even got interesting parallels. I mean, this Emily woman isn't talking, either, last I heard.”

Alida Akido had had no idea that it would be as hard as this to live with other girls in the house, or that she'd be so close to killing one of them because she just couldn't stand the stupid endless chatter anymore. The one she wanted to kill was not Andra Gayle, who didn't actually talk much—probably because, when she did, she sounded like a rap record or an actress playing a drug-addicted whore on
Law & Order.
No, the girl who was driving Alida crazy was her roommate, Mary-Louise Verdt.

The situation was being made worse by the fact that Mary-Louise seemed to think,
because
they were roommates, they had to do everything together.

Right now, they were sitting side by side in the limousine, and Alida wanted to tear the hair out of her own head. At least it would cause a scene. At least it would mean that Mary-Louise would stop talking.

“This means Coraline won't have any film from the challenge,” Mary-Louise was saying. “That's fatal, it really is, especially at this point in the competition. I mean, it's not like they've got days and days of film to judge by instead?”

“Oh, I know,” Janice Ledbeddder said. “Wasn't that awful? And don't you worry about it? I mean, Sheila Dunham is, well, she's like this all the time, isn't she? Or at least she seems to be, on television. Any one of us could be next.”

“At least we'll all be at the challenge,” another of the girls said. Alida wracked her brains and came up with a name: Linda Kowalski. Linda roomed with a girl named Shari Bernstein, and as far as Alida was concerned, they might as well be twins.

Shari was fluffing her hair in a mirror. It had been teased out beyond belief. “There's always somebody who gets left behind at the beginning,” she said. “It's never the first person to actually go home. Even Grace hasn't gone home.”

They all looked at Grace on the far end of the car. She was talking to Suzanne Toretti. She didn't seem to have heard them.

“It won't be Grace, either,” Shari said. “Don't you see? It's got to be a surprise, and Grace and Coraline wouldn't be surprises. Everybody would be expecting them. It's got to be somebody the audience expects is going to stay forever, or maybe even win. Otherwise there wouldn't be any drama.”

“I just hope we're not going to have to do another of those debriefing interviews, or whatever they call them,” Mary-Louise said. “I really hated the one I had the first day. I mean, you never know what you're saying, do you? And they can do things with the tape so that when they show you on television, you look like a complete idiot. That's just what I need, everybody watching at home and seeing me look like a complete idiot.”

“At least you didn't have to do one about how you were knocked out at the end of casting and didn't get into the house,” Janice said. “I hate those. I leave the room when they come on. I won't even watch them. I mean, just how embarrassing does that have to be? Everybody in the world knows you tried, and everybody in the world knows you failed.”

“My mother says you can't be afraid of failure if you're going to succeed,” Linda said. “She says everybody who succeeds fails a lot at
first, and then they pick themselves up and just go on with it. But I'm glad I didn't have to do one of those interviews, either. I think they're so sad.”

The car was pulling up to the curb on a street that looked too quaint to be real. This would be the center of the town of Bryn Mawr, Alida supposed, although she had the impression that most of Bryn Mawr was like where they were living now, big houses on big estates laid back across wide lawns away from the roads. Still, it was interesting. This was supposed to be one of the richest towns in America. Alida liked the look of rich towns.

“Oh, look,” Mary-Louise said. “There they are. The photographers.”

“The paparazzi,” Shari Bernstein corrected her.

Alida looked in the direction Mary-Louise was pointing. They were there all right, half a dozen men with cameras, half hiding in the doorway of the shop next door. In a real celebrity situation, there would be hundreds of them. They would fill the streets and stop traffic. Alida supposed that these people had been hired, and that there wasn't enough money to hire enough of them. It did not look to her like much of a challenge.

The driver stopped the car's engine. The girls all hesitated, wondering what they were supposed to do next. Alida thought she was sure. Celebrities didn't open the doors of their own limousines. They had drivers to to open the doors. She folded her hands in her lap. Down at the other end of the car, Grace Alsop and Andra Gayle were gathering up their things.

The driver came around and opened the door closest to the curb. Shari Bernstein was closest to the door. She got out first, and when she did the photographs rushed up to her, screaming at her to turn to look at them, and snapping pictures all the while. Shari ducked her head and raced for the door to the restaurant.

Linda Kowalski was next. By now, all the girls were looking out of the car windows, watching the performances as they came by. Grace looked very thoughtful, and that was important, because Alida thought Grace was her only real competition.

Mary-Louise went out next, and Alida almost laughed out loud to see that performance. First she ran. Then she seemed to lose her way, then she skidded and fell. When she got up, she had dirt all along the side of her little black dress. She rushed toward the restaurant door and lost a shoe. She turned around, found the shoe, picked it up, and rushed some more.

Alida was next. She got her umbrella from the floor where she had left it when she first got into the car. She stepped out of the limousine in that swiveling way her mother had taught her would not expose any part of her that she did not want people to see. The photographers rushed her as they had rushed all the others. She opened the umbrella directly into their faces and walked—not ran—to the restaurant's front door. She was inside and out of the range of the cameras in no time at all.

Mary-Louise was standing near the reception desk, crying softly into a napkin somebody had gotten her from someplace. Alida ignored her. Other girls were coming in: Janice Ledbedder, looking out of breath; then Ivy, Grace, and Suzanne; and then Andra and Marcia Lee. It took a while for all thirteen girls to enter the restaurant.

Alida moved closer to Grace. “They're all so pathetic,” she said. “They don't look this pathetic on television, do you know what I mean?”

“They're edited for television,” Grace said.

Alida shrugged. The restaurant door opened again and the judging panel came in, or some of them did—there was Sheila Dunham, and Mark Borodine and Johnny Rell, but not the other two. Alida had never had much use for gay men, but the entertainment business was full of them, and she supposed she'd have to tolerate them.

Sheila was walking up and down in front of them. Alida wondered if she took drugs. She was always so extreme, so angry and hyperactive. She did seem to have managed to make it into the restaurant without a hair out of place or an inch of stocking wet.

Alida watched as Sheila stopped in front of Mary-Louise Verdt and looked her up and down. It really was very hard not to laugh in these
situations. It really was. Mary-Louise looked terrified. She also looked like she'd been wrestling in mud.

Alida could feel all the girls holding their breaths. They were waiting for Sheila to do something outrageous and violent, as she had already twice that day.

Instead, Sheila just said, “Go home.”

Mary-Louise's tears welled up yet again. “Excuse me?” she said.

“Go home,” Sheila said. “Get back in the car. You're out of this challenge. No decent restaurant would allow you in looking the way you do.”

“I slipped,” Mary-Louise said, and now the tears were coming down hard and fast. “I—they just all ran at me and so I was running to get away, and I slipped.”

“I don't care what you did,” Sheila said, “you can't come into the restaurant like that. Go back and sit in the car. You're out of this challenge.”

“But I can't be,” Mary-Louise wailed.

“Get out or I'll have you taken out,” Sheila said, and then she turned her back on the crying Mary-Louise, and looked down the line at the other girls.

Alida didn't know why she expected the next target of Sheila Dunham's gaze to be herself, but she did. She was not surprised that Sheila stopped in front of her. She was not afraid, either. She knew she looked good. Unlike most of the rest of these girls, she had clothes that really suited the occasion. She was wearing Betsey Johnson and Gucci, not knockoffs from Kmart and JC Penney. Her hair was good, too, sleek and styled and combed, jet black and falling to her shoulders. She didn't have too much makeup on. She wasn't wearing too much jewelry.

Sheila Dunham said, “Do you think that was smart, what you did out there?”

“I'm not sure what you mean,” Alida said.

“Holding the umbrella in front of your face. Do you think that was smart?”

“I think it successfully prevented the photographers from photographing me,” Alida said.

“And you think that's what you want to do?”

“I think that's what most celebrities do,” Alida said. “They try to avoid the paparazzi if they can.”

Sheila leaned in, far enough so that Alida couldn't help smelling her breath. It was very bad breath.

“Wrong,” Sheila said. “You've got to be a star on the level of Brad Pitt to want to avoid the paparazzi. That's just something you say when reporters ask you, because you don't want to sound like a jerk. When you're a celebrity on the way up, or a celebrity who isn't known for anything but being a celebrity—well, then you need the paparazzi as much as they need you. More. Do you know what people like Paris Hilton do? They make deals with these guys. They make a point of being easy to photograph at least some of the time, because not to be photographed is not to exist. Not to be photographed is not to be famous.”

Alida took a deep breath. There was nothing to say. There wasn't even anything she wanted to say.

Sheila stood back. “So,” she said. “I watched all your performances. And we'll have the pictures at judging, to back this up. But I know right away who has won this challenge. You need to be seen and photographed in a way that makes you look good. Some of you did all right. Some of you did not do so well. Some of you were hopeless, like what's-her-name out in the car. But Johnny and Mark and I have talked it over, and the winner of the challenge is—”

Alida stood very still. She wouldn't be the winner of the challenge, so she assumed that Grace would be. If Sheila hadn't sent Grace home, then Grace could not be out of the competition.

Sheila made a flourish with her arms and announced, “Andra!”

The word bounced across the restaurant foyer like a Ping-Pong ball.

Andra Gayle squealed and jumped up and down, and did all those other things winning contestants loved to do in front of the cameras.

Alida nearly spat.

Ivy Demari was completely astounded that she hadn't been the subject of one of Sheila Dunham's patented on-camera rages—almost as astounded as she was that she'd managed to make it into the house at all. No matter what she had told Dennis at home, she hadn't really thought that
America's Next Superstar
was her thing, except perhaps in the sense that the casting always contained one or two freaks. She certainly looked like the freak in this particular group. She was the only one with visible tattoos. Grace had a small Chipmunk on her left buttock, but she didn't have the buttock on display. She was the only one with hair that wasn't a normal color for hair, too. Even her mother had warned her about that one before she came. Still, Ivy thought, you had to be yourself. She really hated all the normal colors for hair.