Set sail for murder, p.6
Set Sail for Murder, page 6
Polly watched as the ship’s clairvoyant left the room. “A drunk psychic,” she said. “Not a very reliable source for eyewitness news from the future!”
6
Polly turned her attention back to her champagne and grumbled, “I’ll bet that I can read distant signs on a dark and foggy road more clearly than Madam Motormouth can see what’s around the corner of life… and death. What good is being tuned in to the future if it isn’t in HD?”
Tim added, “Ms. Black Magic Woman said it herself. She’s a novelty act.”
“Accent on the word act,” Polly said. She looked at Tim. “Hard physical evidence trumps ephemeral psychic symbols any day. And speaking of… evidence, any luck with your amore, Dan Jell-O?”
“D’Angelo,” Tim corrected.
“That’s what I meant. And please keep any vivid descriptions of romantic tidal waves rolling in your stateroom to yourself—at least until we need to scare off your grandmother the next time she begs to move in with us,” Polly said.
“Hard evidence—not so much,” Tim said. “However…” Tim scanned the lounge to determine if anyone looked suspiciously like Marlee Matlin, prepared to read his lips, and hand-sign the private conversation to the National Intruder. He leaned in toward his mother and Tiara. “Three strikes,” Tim whispered.
Polly’s smile faded. “TMI, sweetums.”
Tim rolled his eyes. “I meant D’Angelo got a third and final demerit for fraternizing with a guest—no, not me. Laura Crawford called the captain and blew the whistle on her little afternoon delight. D’Angelo explained that the company has a semi-zero tolerance policy for a lot of things and sleeping with a guest and/or photographing them in the nude—although indecent photography isn’t specifically in the employee handbook—are biggies. His contract was going to be terminated as soon as we dock in Juneau.”
“Going to be?” Tiara said.
“Dead passengers don’t complain much,” Tim said. “The captain figures since Laura expired, so does her grievance. D’Angelo told me he always knew he’d never be fired.”
Polly took another sip from her champagne glass and pondered D’Angelo’s confidence. “He sees the future too, eh? Anyone so reckless with the company rules, and who thinks that he’s untouchable by the HR department just because he’s pretty, is either a narcissist, deluded, or has friends in high places to protect him. Or maybe his superhero good looks come with superhero powers to demolecularize problem passengers.”
Tim shook his head. “People who resemble a Renaissance statue come to life get away with murder.”
“Precisely!” Polly said a little too loudly and slapped the tabletop to punctuate her pronouncement.
“I was being facetious,” Tim said.
As other passengers looked in Polly’s direction, Tiara said, “Mr. Tim isn’t suggesting literal murder. Heck, if I had a dollar for every time you said you were going to kill your agent, JJ, I’d be able to bail out Washington.”
“Maybe so,” Polly said. “But with all due respect to dear Sophia Loren and Sofia Coppola, as well as Armani, Cavalli, Fendi, Gucci, Prada, and Versace, this Dan Cello fellow is, after all, Italian. Those people are infamous for dealing with others who rat on them.”
Tim and Tiara gave Polly condescending stares. “Those people?” Tim derided.
“Be careful of cultural generalizations,” Tiara warned. “You don’t want a repeat of that Tony Bianchi situation.”
Polly rolled her eyes as she remembered a Saturday afternoon, years ago, at Sonny Bono’s Palm Springs hacienda. “All I did was quote some long-dead famous wit.”
Tim had heard the story a gazillion times and recited, “‘Scratch the surface of any actor…’”
“‘… and you’ll find an actress.’” Tiara completed the quote.
Tim and Tiara joined Polly’s laughter. “That doesn’t go down too well when you’re in the company of a paranoid, lunatic macho stud screen legend who thinks everyone is talking about him and can’t take a joke,” Tim said. “I thought ol’ Tony was going to knock you in the pool!”
“For a supposed tough guy, he was such a sissy,” Polly said of The Blob star. “Everyone else at the party had a sense of humor—even my dear, sweet, dead-too-soon Brady Bunch dad.”
“Loved him,” Tim and Tiara sang together.
“Me thinks that Mr. Bianchi doth protested too much,” Polly said. “Even his name reeked of West Hollywood!” Tim poured his mother and himself another glass of champagne. “D’Angelo is certainly a man of mystery,” Tim said.
“All the really sexy ones are,” Tiara agreed.
“But a killer? Hardly,” Tim said as he pinched his mother’s cheek. “However, just for you, and for the sake of investigating every inch of D’Angelo, I’ll become his best bud—at least for the week. It’s certainly my pleasure!”
Polly patted Tim’s hand and offered a sly smile. “You’re a trouper—and so unselfish.” She turned to Tiara. “You, on the other hand, are a both-feet-on-the-ground adult, and when it comes to matters of love and lust, I know I can count on you to—”
“Nuh-uh! Not this time!” Tiara instantly countered. “I know what you’re going to suggest. I won’t become a spy. The man who tickles my ivories, er, plays the eighty-eights, isn’t anywhere close to being a natural-born killer! So what if he’s held a grudge against Laura? Who hasn’t? Her picture on the bathroom mirror in his cabin means nothing!”
“Laura’s picture is up in his cabin?” Polly said eagerly.
“He gave her devil’s horns and a mustache and blacked out her front teeth.” Tiara giggled.
Tim chuckled. “When I designed Garry Windsor’s last big party, his personal assistant told me that one of the important rules at the house is that whenever Garry returns from his Gold on Ice figure skating tours with that Austrian harridan, Helga Bruder, a fresh photo of Helga has to be on his dartboard. He’d love to kill her, but of course he wouldn’t.”
“See! Defaced pictures mean zilch,” Tiara said.
“Polly Pepper never judges anyone lest she herself be judged,” the star said. “I’m simply suggesting that both of your new friends have had unpleasant encounters with Laura Crawford, and both have semi-plausible motives to eliminate her. I want you both to keep an open mind about your paramours. Let your beaux spill their guts and get confessions out of ’em!”
“The only confession I want from my Lawrence is that he can’t—as the song says—smile without me,” Tiara said. “If I play my cards right, he might take me away from Hollywood. I’d kill to have a normal life!”
Polly took a small sip from her glass and gave Tiara a serious look. “Darling. Honey. Look around. This ship is ground zero for normal. Would you really consider giving up being one degree of separation from Jennifer Aniston’s latest mating mash-up? She needs your double chocolate fudge brownies whenever she gets dumped. And what about all those fab invites to Ellen’s and Portia’s parties? You’d miss those for sure. And what about the fun of getting firsthand and completely unethical but totally reliable trashy dish from Dr. Hooper?”
“Only the really dumb stars still go to that scurrilous shrink,” Tim said. “But the stories about Rob and Julia and Ben and Adam are too bizarre not to be true! He’s more fun than Access Hollywood, E! and TMZ all rolled into one gossip convention.”
“You couldn’t give up living at Pepper Plantation either,” Polly continued. “Or having Barry Manilow over for drinks at Lush Hour and playing Texas Hold’em with Wanda Sykes twice a month. Could you conceive of a life in which a manufactured Disney vacation satisfied your spirit of adventure?”
Tiara hesitated. “I once knew someone who was normal.”
“Once is quite enough, dear.”
“She seemed happy,” Tiara continued. “Mary worked for an insurance company. She had a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath townhouse in downtown Detroit.”
“What good is half a bathroom?” Polly pooh-poohed.
“She married her fitness trainer… even though he had a wandering eye…”
Polly screeched, “The bum!”
“No. He really had an eye that wandered all over the place,” Tiara corrected. “You’d talk to the man and couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t looking over your shoulder or at your chest or at a bit of something lodged in your teeth. His left eyeball just sorta randomly moved, like a glob of that stuff in lava lamps.”
Tim crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “I hate to say it, but Polly’s right. You wouldn’t last a week if we reintroduced you back into the wild. You’ve lived among eccentrics for too long. You’re one of us now.”
Polly clicked her tongue. “Everyone thinks that beds are warmer on the other side of Beverly Hills. Trust me, that’s only because normal people are bored with their lives. They use sex and drugs and porn and these pseudo-celebrity cruises for escapism from dreary jobs and kids they may love but don’t necessarily like. They’d kill to be in your shoes as much as you think you’d kill to be in theirs.”
Tiara rolled her eyes, then stopped a waitress who was passing by with a tray of smoked oysters. “We’ll take those off your hands, dear,” she said.
Tim said, “‘Normal’ people don’t like smoked oysters!”
Tiara looked at Polly, whose vacant eyes now seemed to be staring into the abyss of Madam Destiny’s domain.
“Daydreaming about a shipload of suspects?” Tiara asked after she’d swallowed two oysters.
Tim waved his hand in front of his mother before she blinked and returned to the moment. Polly suddenly bolted upright, picked up her champagne glass, and knocked back the remaining bubbly. With a river of adrenaline gushing through her system, she gloated, “I’m brilliant! I should get one of those Genius Awards! I’ve been waiting for an amazing idea to come to me, and it just did! I know where to get the name of the killer!”
7
In the next moment, Polly and her troupe were racing out of the lounge and tearing along the Upper Promenade Deck to the glass elevators. As Polly impatiently jabbed at the call button, Tiara nervously tapped a foot, and Tim cracked his knuckles. “You’d think this was the Sears Tower instead of a fourteen-story ship,” Polly complained, impatient for the elevator to arrive. Soon, the doors parted. They smiled to conceal their irritation as they waited for the packed car of ancient passengers to shuffle out and argue about whether or not they were on the correct deck.
“You’re an idiot,” said one old woman to a man who was probably her husband.
“It’s this way.”
“You’re turned around.”
“I have a sixth sense.”
“It’s called dementia.”
Just as another old man with more liver spots on his bald head than bruises on an overripe banana peel convinced his partner that indeed they had gotten off too early, Polly, Tim, and Tiara slipped into the glass box and frantically pushed the button to close the door. One of the women in the group tried to step back inside. “What goes down must come back up. Like heartburn,” Polly trilled as she nudged the lady out and pushed away the flailing arms of a dozen octopuses trying to keep the door from closing. The others looked on with dumbstruck faces as the door panels slipped across the threshold and cut them off from Polly.
Swiftly dropping to the main deck, Polly, Tim, and Tiara exited past another queue of withered old-timers eager to ride up to the casino or dining rooms. Polly’s son and maid were in lockstep behind the star as she flew past the Armani, Cartier, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferragamo, and Montblanc boutiques. Ordinarily, each of these shops would have lured Polly away from whatever appointment to which she might have been en route. But not this time. Halfway down the main concourse, Polly came to an abrupt halt in front of the All Bound Up bookstore. “This is it,” she said.
There, in the display window, was a giant poster of the famous Hirschfeld caricature of Polly with her exaggerated large eyes and lashes and prominent overbite. Below the poster was a pyramid of boxed sets of The Polly Pepper Playhouse collector’s edition DVDs. Polly smiled.
As they entered the store, Polly instantly spied a young woman wearing the uniform of a ship’s employees. The girl was leaning her elbows on the counter as she read a book. Polly sized up the clerk and figured she looked nerdy enough to perhaps have been friendless as a kid, and therefore might have had time to watch reruns of The Polly Pepper Playhouse instead of being chased by boys. Polly placed her hands on her hips, tilted her head to a forty-degree angle, smiled brightly, and cheerfully called out in her well-known Polly Pepper falsetto, “I’m hee-eere!”
The startled employee recoiled. When she recovered, she instantly recognized Polly. “Oh, my stars! It’s… um, you… from the DVD box! Wow! Your hair really is that color! Does Bozo think you copied him?”
Despite her annoyance, Polly maintained her famous and infectious smile and moved into the store. She reached out to shake the young woman’s hand. “I’m a terrible guest on this adorable little boat of yours. I should have dropped by sooner to introduce myself. I’m Polly Pepper, of course.”
“Tiffany-Amber. Of course.”
“Is Tiffany-Amber responsible for taking such good care of my babies?” Polly pointed to the large display of DVDs. “They look dusted and as fresh as the day they came out of the factory.”
“They don’t require much care and feeding,” said Tiffany-Amber. “Anyway, nobody touches ’em. In fact, we’ve just slashed the price. Again. You’d think there’d be at least a little interest. ’Specially since that star who got sliced and diced in the spa is—or was—on the ship.”
Tim and Tiara simultaneously reached out to steady Polly.
“You’ll think I’m an empty-headed, vain, and ego-driven legend, but I’m simply dying to know who is gobbling up my precious body of work,” Polly said.
“As I said, the fish aren’t biting.” Tiffany-Amber closed her copy of Killer Cruise that she was reading.
“Still, I must thank each and every person who purchased my collection. They’ll naturally want my autograph, for sure,” Polly said. “Would you be an incredible doll and provide me with a list of all the passengers whose journey I’m helping to make extra special by their selecting this amazing and historic bit of television memorabilia?”
Tiffany-Amber paused. “Gee. Um. Cashless cruising is how it works on board, so we probably have a record of the sales. But I think passengers’ purchases are, like, confidential or something. Like ATM PIN numbers or sins you confess to a priest.”
Polly surreptitiously nudged Tim. He reached out to Tiffany-Amber and introduced himself. Instantly, his blue eyes, deep dimples, and warm smile cleaved Tiffany-Amber’s rapidly pounding heart. “Hey ya,” he said in his most seductive voice. “Listen. Here’s a grand scheme. Mom—Polly Pepper, I mean—is giving an intimate private cocktail soiree before her show this afternoon in the Lusitania Lounge,” he lied. “Just a bunch of used-to-be-semi-famous and now totally forgotten has-beens hanging out and wondering what happened to their lives and careers. It’d be cool to be with someone like you to keep me from slitting my wrists when they start counting who had the most guest appearances on The Love Boat.”
Tim had Tiffany-Amber’s heart at first drool. Not only did she eagerly accept the invitation, but she decided that she could indeed call up an inventory of purchases from the store’s database. In moments she accessed an Excel spreadsheet on which the names of every passenger who purchased Polly’s DVD collection were entered. She printed out a copy and handed it to Tim, who folded the paper and gave Tiffany-Amber a warm smile and a thank-you that practically melted her plastic name badge.
Tiffany-Amber reluctantly took her eyes off Tim for a moment and looked at Polly. “You won’t get writer’s cramp signing from this list. If you start now, I’ll bet you finish before the flavor’s gone from my gum.” She snapped a wad of Bazooka.
“I’ll give it my best shot,” Polly said, trying to suppress her irritation at both Tiffany-Amber and the four thousand plus passengers’ apparent lack of interest in buying her DVD collection. As the trio left the store, Tim backed out slowly, smiling and maintaining eye contact with Tiffany-Amber. As he blasted her with enough megavolts of sexual energy to keep her awake with an all-night fever, Polly teased her son. “Heartbreaker!”
“Every girl needs a platonic BFF.” Tim smiled.
Soon, the trio was back in Polly’s cabin, and Tim was unfolding the passenger information. Looking at the short list, Polly’s eyes instantly went to the column on the far right-hand side and shouted, “$59.99?! The bonus booklet alone, with never-before-published photos of me with Cher and Bette and Rock and Barbra, should cost more than that!”
When she finished being indignant, Polly focused on the names listed on the sheet. She called out, “One. Two. Three. Bingo! Look at that. The last name on the list.”
“Lawrence Deerfield!” Tim said.
Tiara grabbed the piece of paper and looked at the name. Her heart sank. “The date of purchase was the day we set sail,” she said. “I will not believe that a man who finds me desirable is Laura Crawford’s murderer!”
“Maybe you’re next!” Polly said. “What if this nut job is a celebrity serial killer?”
“Lawrence is not a nut job. And I’m not a celebrity.”
“You’re practically radiant with my reflected glory!”
“Any radiation from me is the stored-up heat of finally canoodling with an attractive and talented man!”
Tim wrapped his arms around Tiara. “Heck, even the other two names here don’t mean anything—yet. They could all simply be people with the sophisticated sense to own Polly’s classic shows.”
“Sophisticated? On this boat?”
