Curse of the Kissing Cousins

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  “Did it?”

  “More or less. Not so much because I was a kid, but because I planted myself between them, which cramped his style. Especially when I kept stepping on his foot. Accidentally of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “So there I was next to Mercy, waving at the crowd like I was somebody. My mom saw me on TV, and so did everybody else in the family. It was awesome.”

  “What did you and Mercy talk about? Every time I see people in parades talking and laughing between waves, I wonder what they’re saying.”

  “Nothing earth-shattering. ‘Are you as cold as I am?’ ‘Aren’t your arms tired from waving?’ That kind of thing. Plus Mercy asked me what grade I was in, and what my favorite subject was, and how many girlfriends I had. The kinds of questions people ask kids when they’re being nice. All Bonnier talked about was the people we saw, especially the girls. ‘Isn’t that one a porker?’ and ‘I hope that chick playing the trombone is rich, because it’s the only way she’ll ever get laid.’ Mercy kept trying to get him to shut up, but he ignored her.”

  “Had Mercy not already inspired you to join your dad’s business, I suppose encountering Bonnier would have pushed you toward becoming a gossip columnist.”

  He grinned. “I could have dished some dirt on him, without a doubt. After the parade, Bonnier tried to get Mercy to go out with him so he could, and I quote, ‘Stuff her turkey.’ ”

  Tilda sputtered inelegantly. “Get out of here!”

  “Scout’s honor,” he said, holding up three fingers in the time-honored way. “She refused much more politely than she should have, and he got pissy and stomped away.”

  “Did you get his autograph?”

  “No, but he did give me his used coffee cup. He said I could use it to get some action with the girls in school.”

  Tilda allowed herself a smaller sputter. “What an asshole!”

  “Yeah, but you know, he was considerably younger then than I am now. If I’d had that kind of money and attention when I was that age, I’d have been an asshole too.”

  “Mercy was younger than he was,” Tilda pointed out, “but she wasn’t an asshole.”

  “No, she definitely wasn’t.” He got a dreamy look in his eye.

  “You had it bad, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah. It wasn’t just that she was a looker—though she was—or sexy—though she was that too. She had presence. You don’t see it often in a person, even in my line of work—plenty of performers are talented and do good work but don’t have that kind of effect on me.”

  “Star power,” Tilda suggested.

  “That’s it. She was the first person I met who really had it. She should have hit it big.”

  Tilda agreed, and wished she could find out why she hadn’t. “What happened after Bonnier slithered away?”

  “Dad had the car waiting, and we drove Mercy back to her hotel. We’d been booked for the whole day—or at least Dad had been—but she said she was going to have dinner with a friend there at the hotel and said she didn’t want to keep us from our family. After Dad made sure she meant it, we caught the next train back to Boston. We even made it in time to carve the turkey.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Are you holding out on me?”

  He grinned like a little boy caught with his hand in grand-ma’s cookie jar—knowing he’d done something he shouldn’t have, but proud of himself just the same. “She kissed me good-bye.”

  “I’m surprised you needed a train to get home. I bet you could have floated back.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “What about the photo?”

  “Photo? Right, I almost forgot about that. When the friend showed up, she had a photographer with her. I think she was a magazine editor for one of those teen magazines.”

  “Teen Fave?”

  “That’s the one. How did you know?”

  In answer, Tilda reached for her satchel, and pulled out the copy of the magazine with the photo of Mercy and Sophia alongside the man and boy she now knew were Dom and Nick.

  “Hey, I never saw this,” he said.

  “This picture is how I tracked you and your father down. I had dinner with that editor recently, and she still has her files with the release form he signed.”

  “No kidding? That’s nice detective work.”

  “It’s what I do,” she said nonchalantly.

  “I’m just sorry it didn’t pay off this time.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Tilda said, smiling.

  “Yeah? That sounds encouraging.”

  “I meant it to. I’m not much into subtlety.”

  “Me neither.” They shared a moment that might have gone on longer had the waitress not shown up with a pot of coffee for refills.

  Though the mood was broken, Tilda had a hunch it could be rekindled with a minimum of effort. The fact that Nick’s next move was to ask about her work convinced her of it.

  He said, “Do you only write this kind of piece? The ‘where are they now?’ thing?”

  “No, I write other entertainment articles, but nostalgia is my specialty. People like knowing what happened to their old favorites. The formerly famous, I call them, as opposed to people who’ve stayed in the public eye.”

  “Which story sells better? The big star settling down to a quiet life or the big star hitting the skids?”

  “It depends on the market. Some magazines—the women’s and family-focused ones—want actresses who’ve abandoned the glamour of Cannes and Hollywood for the rewarding life of changing diapers and making Hamburger Helper for dinner. This reassures women who stay at home. They either think ‘if it’s important enough for a big star, it’s important enough for me’ or ‘I could have been a big star too, but I heard the noble calling of motherhood.’ The more cynical markets want the ‘hitting the skids’ stories—the cost of fame, see how the mighty have fallen, plus general schadenfreude. Inspirational magazines want stars who’ve left the Sodom of Hollywood in order to follow God, or Buddha, or whoever. Men’s magazines want the ones who were babes to still be babes. And fan magazines want to know that their stars still love them.”

  “What about you?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me. I pick out a likely candidate to hunt down, or get a lead on somebody, and when I find out what their situation is, I figure out which market will want their story and slant it that way. If I’m lucky, I can slant it several ways and sell different versions of the article to different markets, as long as they don’t compete.”

  “I mean, what do you want to find out about them? That they’ve had a good life, a rotten life, or a Godly life?”

  “I just want to find them. That’s the fun part for me.”

  “Have you ever hunted somebody who didn’t want to be found?”

  “They all want to be found,” she said firmly. “Maybe they’ve turned their backs on the industry, but part of them still wants to be famous, at least for a little while.” Tilda thought back to the image she’d had at Holly’s funeral, of fame as a kind of drug. “Fame can be very addicting. It’s hard to lose it—even those who complain about it seem to crave it when it’s gone.”

  “Like crack?” Nick said.

  “Exactly. I suppose that makes me a pusher.”

  Nick took a swallow of coffee, apparently thinking it over. “No, a pusher would keep selling the drug they’re hooked on—you’re bringing them down gently. More of a methadone thing.”

  “Mental methadone. I can live with that.”

  “It must be frustrating when you can’t find somebody you’re looking for.”

  “Mercy is the only one I haven’t found. So far, anyway.”

  “Is that right? No wonder you’re so determined.”

  “That’s part of it.” Maybe she’d tell him about how much Mercy meant to her personally another time, assuming there was another time, which she certainly wanted to assume.

  The check came then, and Nick d
utifully pulled out the company credit card to pay for it. “Next time, it’ll be on me personally,” he assured her.

  “Next time?”

  “Hey, I told you I’m not subtle.”

  On the walk back to his office to pick up Tilda’s suitcase, Nick asked, “Did I answer all your questions about Mercy?”

  “I think so,” she said. Once it became plain that Nick didn’t have any idea of Mercy’s whereabouts, the rest of lunch had just been for fun anyway. Then she thought of those smarmy posts from Have_Mercy. “There is one thing. I know you probably weren’t around her enough to have an opinion about this, but I’ve heard some vague rumors that Mercy slept around.”

  “Really?” He frowned as he considered it. “I was young, but I sure didn’t pick up any vibes that she was that way. I told you how she kept Bonnier at arm’s length.”

  “That could have been because they worked together—even promiscuous people sometimes know better than to mix business with pleasure. Or maybe he just wasn’t her type.”

  “I guess. Let’s ask Pop when we get back to the office. It’s like I told you before—he’s got this sense of people.”

  Dom was still at the front desk, and when asked, he was positive that the rumor was wrong. As he put it, “I couldn’t answer to what she was before or after, but when I met her, she was a good girl. Not naive, and I’m not saying she was a virgin, but she wasn’t a tramp, either.”

  Then both Tolomeo men promised to call if they came up with any ideas to help find Mercy, and Nick added that he’d be calling early next week even if he didn’t. Tilda liked the sound of that.

  Chapter 14

  I used to run these columns predicting who’d still be around

  and what they’d be doing—“Five Years from Now,” “Ten Years

  from Now,” and so on. I never worried about being right because

  our readers outgrew us long before that. Anyhow, the one I did

  for the kids in Kissing Cousins came pretty close, but I blew it

  with Mercy Ashford. I was sure she’d be a big star.

  —SOPHIA VAUGHN, QUOTED IN “CURSE OF THE KISSING COUSINS,” ENTERTAIN ME!

  AT two-thirty Tilda was sitting at the spare desk at the Entertain Me! office, ready to call the director of The Raven’s Prey. She’d arrived with fifteen minutes to spare, enough time to get herself and her laptop arranged comfortably and to tease Cooper by telling him she’d dined with two different men since she’d seen him last.

  Plus she got to watch shit flow downhill as the magazine staff made last-minute arrangements for a cocktail party they were hosting as part of the Boston Film Festival. First Bryce sniped at Jillian because it was threatening to go over budget. Then Jillian scolded Nicole for spending too much on the contents of the swag bags. Next Nicole tried to lay the blame on Shannon, but Shannon started crying. Tilda didn’t know whether Shannon honestly got upset that easily or if it was a political ploy. Whatever it was, Nicole found herself with nobody to dump her load of shit on, and when she looked at Tilda speculatively, Tilda picked up the phone and started dialing, once again devoutly grateful to be a freelancer.

  Had she not already known Matthew Boardman was retired, she’d have guessed it when he answered his own phone. Working directors have assistants for chores like that. Sometimes their assistants have assistants.

  “Mr. Boardman? This is Tilda Harper from Entertain Me! Sophia Vaughn suggested that I call you.”

  “Yes, she spoke to me about you yesterday. I must thank you for that—I haven’t spoken to Sophia in an age. I didn’t even realize that she knew where I live, but of course Sophia always did know everything. And I’m always happy to talk to a friend of Sophia’s.”

  “Thank you. I’m working on an article about the former cast members of the seventies sitcom Kissing Cousins.”

  “That rings a vague bell,” Boardman allowed, “though my work was always in film, not the small screen.”

  Having checked him out on IMDb, Tilda could honestly say, “I realize that of course, but at one point you worked with one of those cast members. Mercy Ashford was originally slated to work on The Raven’s Prey.”

  There was a pause long enough to make Tilda wonder if the connection had been broken. Then Boardman said, “Yes, I remember Miss Ashford.” His voice had lost the warmth it had held when talking about Sophia. “I’m afraid I couldn’t say anything positive about her. If you’re working on a retrospective of her work, you’d be better off talking to somebody else.”

  “Perhaps I should explain. I’m trying to locate Mercy. You see, she dropped off the radar right after she left your production, and hasn’t been seen since.”

  “Really? Even her agent doesn’t know where she is?”

  “No, sir. Even though her agent passed away, she’s still officially a client of the agency, and they have no idea.”

  “How peculiar.”

  “I was hoping you might have some insight as to what was going on with her at that time, since you were one of the last people in the industry to see her.”

  “Was I? Then I wish I could tell you more. You already know that Mercy was signed to play the lead in The Raven’s Prey. In the few days of film we shot with her, I was very pleased with her work. I’d worked with former television people before, and generally I hadn’t been impressed. But Miss Ashford had genuine screen presence, and though her acting wasn’t world-class, she was working very hard to improve. The script wasn’t particularly good—I only took the job because I was short of funds—but with Miss Ashford showing such promise, I had some hopes for the completed film. She rose above the material, frankly.”

  “How long did she work with you?”

  “Throughout preproduction and for the first two weeks of filming. She called in sick on the Monday of the third week, but we weren’t alarmed—these things happen. We simply rearranged the schedule and filmed scenes in which she did not appear. On Tuesday, she called again. That time it was harder to work around her absence, and it was harder still on Wednesday. We actually had to shut down for the rest of the week, which I’m sure you realize is an expense any director prefers to avoid. That weekend, Miss Ashford’s agent called to tell us she was leaving the production. The producer was understandably enraged. He made the usual threats about Miss Ashford never working in films again, and so forth, but the agent didn’t even try to explain her client’s actions. She seemed as nonplussed as we were.” He sighed. “Production was shut down for two more weeks while we recast the part, and we ended up with a lead who was not quite up to the challenge. Box office receipts were poor, and I always blamed Miss Ashford for that.”

  “You had no warning that she was planning to leave the production?”

  “Not an inkling. She was very enthusiastic, and seemed delighted to have graduated from television work. And you could see the spark of something in the rushes. I remember that when I went home at the end of the second week, I was sure that we’d be seeing a lot more of her in the future. But after such unprofessional behavior . . . Well, I’m afraid I minced no words when I discussed the incident with colleagues.”

  In other words he’d trashed her to anybody who would listen. “I don’t think anybody could blame you for that. It must have been very trying.” Tilda shook herself. She was picking up the man’s tone. “The producer’s threat came true, as it happened. Mercy Ashford never worked in the industry again.”

  “What a waste,” Boardman said.

  “You’ll get no arguments from me. I imagine that since you weren’t working together that long, you didn’t learn much about Mercy’s personal life.”

  “She was unmarried, but I presume you know that. Other than that, there’s not much I can tell you. I maintained somewhat formal relationships during shooting.”

  Tilda wasn’t surprised. “Do you remember her mentioning any friends, or if she ever brought a friend to the set?”

  “No, I don’t believe she did. She did do an interview on set—with Sop
hia Vaughn, as a matter of fact—but that’s the only time I saw her with a guest.”

  “What about the other people on the film? Did she seem particularly close to anybody?”

  “Not really. She was friendly with everybody, but the scenes she worked on were mostly solo, so she didn’t have much interaction with her costars. As for myself, the only time I recall speaking to her about a non-work-related issue was when she asked how we went about hiring makeup people. Apparently she had a friend she was hoping to get onto the production. I referred her to the appropriate person, but that’s all I know.”