“Dr. Gilman.” She shook his hand, then grinned. “I’d like you to meet my friend, Fern Bernard. Fern, this is Dr. Gilman.”
“Avery,” he corrected her as he released her hand and turned to Fern.
Erica turned to her, too. She stood transfixed, just inside the dining-room doorway, staring at Dr. Gilman as if he were a creature from another planet.
He didn’t look that strange. With her spiky, persimmon-red hair, Fern arguably looked stranger. As though someone had nudged her from behind, she stepped into the room, her hand outstretched. Dr. Gilman clasped it in his own. She sighed, then said, “It’s a pleasure,” although forcing out the words seemed to be a serious challenge.
What was wrong with her? She was a college graduate; she’d met professors before. Even if she hadn’t, she was never cowed by anyone. She was brassy and sassy, possibly the most sophisticated resident of Rockwell.
She lowered her gaze slightly and sighed again. If Erica didn’t know better—if she didn’t know that Fern had designs on Derrick Messinger—she might think Fern was smitten with Dr. Gilman.
Absolutely absurd. Avery Gilman represented the antithesis of everything Fern yearned for: excitement, electricity, cutting-edge style. He was a slightly moldy, slightly musty pedant. Why did Fern seem on the verge of swooning?
Erica wasn’t the only person to notice Fern’s odd reaction. Derrick Messinger cleared his throat loudly, as if to remind everyone that he was, after all, the most important person in the room. While Fern hovered near Dr. Gilman, her hand still clasped within his, Derrick clamped his own strong hand on Erica’s shoulder. “Erica! This is perfect! Why don’t we do a sit-down right here? Sonya, get your notes. Mookie, fire up the camera—”
“We’re not doing a sit-down,” Erica cut him off, not exactly sure what a sit-down was. “I’m here only to welcome my former professor and make sure he’s all settled in.” She glanced back at Dr. Gilman and found him gazing down at Fern with that same goo-goo look in his eyes.
Good God. What had happened to their plan? Erica was supposed to resist Derrick’s attempt to interview her, and Fern was supposed to be the liaison, the heroine who persuaded Erica to contribute to Derrick’s show, and then Derrick was supposed to reward Fern for her assistance by falling for her. But right now, Fern seemed unaware Derrick was even in the room.
“I baked that banana bread,” she purred. “I hope you like it.”
“It’s great!” the cameraman said.
“It was quite tasty, as was Ms. Shoemaker’s tea. A welcome tonic after my long drive.” He gave Fern’s hand a slight squeeze before releasing it.
“Okay, look,” the other woman interjected. Yes, her voice did sound like a foghorn, one with a New York accent. “Enough with the banana bread. We’re all here, so let’s figure this out. Av, you’re gonna open the box tomorrow night, agreed? Eight-thirty, so we can get the live feed out of Manchester.”
“I don’t know,” Avery said, arching an eyebrow just enough to inform Erica he didn’t like being called Av. “As I’ve said all along, I have to examine the specimen first. I don’t work according to some network’s broadcast schedule.”
“Maybe you don’t, but schedules are schedules,” the foghorn lectured. “We’ve got a lock on eight to nine tomorrow night. A half hour of ‘Welcome to Rockwell’—which I’ll be editing tomorrow morning at the studio in Manchester—followed by the live feed at eight-thirty, during which you open the box, followed by reaction to whatever happens to be inside it.”
“What if the box is empty?” Erica asked. “Are you going to broadcast a half hour of stunned silence?” Avery laughed. Fern managed a dazed smile.
“There’s always a reaction. Don’t worry. I’m a pro.”
“So am I,” Derrick interjected, just in case anyone had forgotten about him.
“And I’ve busted my tail to get us this live feed,” the foghorn said. “We get to be front and center when you do open it. I’m Just the Messinger gets the exclusive. Right?” Before anyone could respond, she addressed Erica. “We were thinking of having Av open the box here, in this room. For one thing, the decor is great, very antique in style. For another, the lighting is excellent.”
“No,” Erica said. “We’re not going to open the box here. We’re not moving the box from my house until we have a clearer idea of its age and value.” She shot Avery a glance and was gratified to see his nod. “I don’t care about the lighting.”
“When you’re taping a TV show, the lighting is important.”
“But the box was found behind my house. That’s where it should be opened. As far as I know,” Erica added pointedly, “journalists don’t stage events.”
Derrick’s smile vanished. The foghorn hadn’t been smiling in the first place. If the cameraman was wounded by Erica’s insinuation, he salved his hurt feelings by slicing himself another piece of Fern’s banana bread.
“Let’s have a look at this box, then, shall we?” Avery suggested, apparently oblivious to the tension in the room. His gaze lingered for a moment on Fern, and then he addressed Erica. “At your house. Perhaps your friend would like to join us?”
Erica glanced at Fern, who peered up at Avery with dewy eyes. “I’m sure she would,” Erica said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHERE HAD ALL THESE CARS come from? Derrick wondered irritably as he guided the rental car behind the line of vehicles parked in front of Erica Leitner’s house and turned off the engine. He recognized a disgusting old gray pickup in the spot nearest her driveway—it belonged to Jack Willetz, that little worm. The guy had squeezed ten bucks out of Derrick in exchange for his son’s cell phone number, and a lot of good that had done. These small-town hicks had gall. Some of the locals went out of their way to make Derrick feel special, but others—for instance, everyone he’d met with the last name of Willetz—wrung him out.
God knew what was in the damn box. At this point, Derrick was having trouble pretending he cared. Well, they’d get it open tonight, broadcast the big event and be done with it.
Last night, Gilman had looked the box over and said he was sure he’d be able to open it tonight. That morning, after a breakfast of coffee, orange juice and gooey blueberry muffins—Ms. Shoemaker had laughed so hard she’d suffered an asthma attack when Derrick had inquired whether she had any low-fat muffins, a question he failed to see the humor in—he’d sat Avery down in the inn’s front room and interviewed him on tape for an hour. It had been excruciating. He’d asked Avery what he thought might be inside the box, and Avery had pontificated for a full ten minutes on some no-name nobody who’d apparently been a confidant of Ethan Allen’s and had helped to recruit soldiers for the Revolutionary War. It had taken Derrick a while to remember that Ethan Allen was a Colonial-era war hero and not just the name of a furniture-store chain.
Fortunately, Sonya was a genius when it came to editing. She and Mookie had left the inn at ten and driven to the studio of a network affiliate in Manchester to edit everything they’d taped in and around Rockwell, including the fawning merchants, that long-faced bartender and his equally long-faced son, and the town drunk. Derrick had spent the day dozing, watching a Dirty Harry flick on TV in the rear parlor—no cable in the rooms, let alone pay-per-view adult fare—and sipping scotch out of a delicate porcelain coffee cup with flowers painted around the edge. They looked suspiciously like pansies, but he wasn’t going to guzzle straight from the bottle when Ms. Shoemaker was around, acting as though she believed she was running a high-class establishment.
He hoped tonight would go smoothly. At this point, all he wanted was to do his I’m Just the Messinger gig, jump on the next plane to LaGuardia and sleep in his own bed.
Maybe he’d have wanted to stay longer if he could have slept in the funky red-haired chick’s bed. He thought he’d played Erica’s friend Fern very nicely two days ago, simultaneously ignoring her and sending her vibes. He happened to emanate extremely potent vibes; they’d carried him to a pinnacle of stardom once and would
again. The redhead had seemed receptive, too. But as of yesterday afternoon, she had eyes only for Herr Professor.
All right, so maybe Derrick wasn’t destined to score with a local while covering the biggest story in Rockwell’s boring little history. Maybe the Man from Harvard would open the damn box, it would be empty and Derrick would escape from this hellhole, whereupon he’d return to the world of doormen, gorgeous twenty-something secretaries in miniskirts and free delivery from every Chinese restaurant within a ten-block radius. Freedom was only hours away. He could hardly wait.
He got out of the rental car, locked it and reached inside his pocket to make sure he had his lucky rubber band with him. Then he strolled along the row of cars toward Erica’s front door. He didn’t recognize the professor’s car among the vehicles lining the road. Avery Gilman had to be here, though. He’d probably gotten a ride with Fern. Derrick didn’t know what kind of car she owned. If this were a halfway believable town, she’d be driving something sharp—a Corvette or a Miata, maybe—but in Rockwell, the mountains were hills, the scotch was low-test Johnny Walker and the cool girl probably drove a minivan.
Actually, the only minivan parked outside Erica Leitner’s house was the one Mookie and Sonya had driven back from Manchester, with the satellite dish on its roof and the local affiliate’s logo painted, blinding red against a yellow background, on its sides. Most of the vehicles were pickup trucks, none quite as seedy looking as Jack Willetz’s, and SUVs.
Sonya must have been watching for him, because she barreled out the front door as he started across the straw-brown lawn. “That Barbie doll from the Boston local news is back,” she announced in her braying Bronx accent.
“She’s not filming the opening, though,” Derrick half asked. “We’ve got exclusive rights to that, don’t we?”
“Erica Leitner didn’t sign anything with us, but I’m pretty sure the Boston reporter doesn’t know that. There are people from the Globe and the Herald and from papers in Portland and Nashua, but they can’t do anything with the story until tomorrow, so who cares?” Sonya babbled as she trooped back into the house with Derrick, painfully hip in her black stretch pants and black turtleneck. He followed her inside and grimaced at the hubbub of chattering voices that greeted him as he crossed the threshold, a sound he associated with cocktail parties. Did they have cocktail parties in Rockwell? It was Friday night, after all. And Erica was Harvard educated. Perhaps she’d have some quality thirst-quenchers available for the guests.
Right. And where would she obtain quality thirst-quenchers around here? He should have asked Mookie to pick up a bottle of Chivas while he’d been in Manchester earlier today.
Erica’s cocktail party to celebrate the grand opening of her box comprised maybe twenty people. They milled about her living room, which was furnished with less money but more taste than the parlors at the Hope Street Inn. No chintz, no frills, no upholstery or curtains or knickknacks featuring a pattern of pansies. The walls were that cheap off-white shade of paint that landlords always used to conceal dirt and stains before they showed a unit to a new tenant. The brownish-gray carpet wore indentations and ruts from the previous residents’ furniture.
Derrick surveyed the room. Sonya had buttonholed the perky reporter from Boston. A few guys carried still cameras; they must be print-media people. In one corner stood the long-faced bar owner and his kid, who wore a cap featuring a logo for Triple-X Beer, whatever the hell that was.
He spotted one of the ladies from the crafts store engrossed in a conversation with a moon-faced woman holding a large spiral notepad. She looked more apt to hit someone over the head with the pad than to write in it, but she did have a pen in one hand, so who knew? The fellow who owned that minigrocery store in town meandered around the room, setting out paper plates filled with Ritz crackers garnished with canned cheese and chunks of what appeared to be beef jerky. Rockwell’s version of hors d’oeuvres, Derrick thought with a grimace. Jack Willetz and the town drunk—what was his name? Some amphibian. Newt, maybe?—were stuffing their mouths with cheese-smeared crackers, as if they hadn’t eaten in days. Resisting the urge to curl his lip, Derrick moved toward a doorway filled with glaring light.
The doorway opened onto the dining room, and when Derrick peeked inside he saw Mookie busy setting up bright lights to illuminate the table. It was covered with a clean white cloth, and at the center of the table sat the box. With all the light and the white linens, the room looked sterile enough to serve as a hospital’s OR.
And why not? Gilman would be performing surgery in there soon enough.
Derrick moved on to the kitchen, a gloomy room in dire need of renovation. Erica and Gilman were there, spying on Mookie’s preparations through the dining-room doorway and sipping from tall glasses of water—although it could be vodka or gin, Derrick thought optimistically. Hovering beside them were Fern, her hair the color of a cherry jelly bean, and the youngest Willetz, tall and thick shouldered, clad in a plaid wool shirt over a navy-blue T-shirt and faded jeans. He looked like some sort of laborer, a lumberjack down from the mountain in search of sex.
Derrick wasn’t sure why that image had jumped into his brain, other than the fact that sex was never far from his thoughts. But there was something…not quite predatory but definitely hungry in Jed Willetz’s pale-gray eyes. Hungry and possessive. He held a brown bottle in his hand, some brand of beer. Better than water, Derrick thought.
“Hello there, Erica,” Derrick said in his smoothest, most reassuring voice. “Dr. Gilman. Are you all set to become a TV star?”
“Why are you doing this live?” Jed Willetz asked. “It could be a disaster. What if the lock is stuck?”
“That’s part of the excitement,” Derrick explained, not caring if he sounded condescending. “No one knows what will happen. The network’s been promoting this story since yesterday. They bumped two sitcom repeats off the hour just to accommodate my show. People want to see it live. They want to be surprised.”
“What people?” Jed shook his head. “This is like one of those stupid reality shows, where people make asses of themselves because they want to be famous.”
“No one is going to make an ass of himself,” Derrick said, not adding that the reason most people tuned in to live broadcasts like this was that they hoped someone would make an ass of himself. That was the big draw: the possibility that someone would do something foolish or dangerous or downright ridiculous on the air.
He checked his watch. Eight-ten. The show was already being broadcast, not the live part but the prologue, Sonya’s minidocumentary about cute little Rockwell.
“Why don’t we go into the dining room and get ourselves organized,” he suggested.
Erica sighed and spun around to face Fern. “How do I look?”
“Gorgeous,” Fern assured her. Behind her, Jed Willetz nodded.
Erica’s frown expressed disbelief. “My mother thought I looked washed out on TV the other night.”
“Who are you going to listen to, your mother or me? You look fine.” Fern reached up and brushed a long, wavy strand of hair behind Erica’s ear. “Break a leg, honey. You, too,” she added, giving Gilman’s hand a squeeze.
He smiled faintly and followed Erica into the dining room. Derrick dismissed Jed Willetz and Fern—the tasteless bitch, choosing a Harvard professor over him—with a nod and joined the others in the dining room.
The doorway into the living room began filling with onlookers, some of them chewing crackers and canned cheese, a few wielding disposable cameras. What a circus. But after all, circuses were the oxygen I’m Just the Messinger breathed.
Fortunately, Sonya was able to organize the clowns so they’d make good background scenery without imposing on the central drama. “Remember,” she hollered above the din, “you can watch, but you’ve gotta keep quiet. We can’t have a lot of distracting noise. If you folks don’t remain quiet I’m gonna have to clear you out of the room.” She carried a clipboard, which lent her a certain authority
.
“My kid has to be in the front row,” the bartender shouted, shoving his son forward through the small crowd. “My kid, Randy Rideout. He found the box. He gets to stand in front!” The kid looked sheepishly at his father, who continued nudging him forward.
“He can stand near the front if you want,” Sonya conceded. “But he can’t say a word.”
“How about he just says he was the one who found the box?”
“Not a word,” Sonya said so fiercely Rideout Senior fell back a step. Rideout Junior remained where he was, however, just inside the doorway, his stupid hat in full view of the camera.
“Can he take the hat off?” Derrick suggested to Sonya. “We don’t want brand advertising in our broadcast.”
Sonya nodded. “The hat goes.” She tugged it off the kid’s head and tossed it through the doorway in the general direction of his father.
Gilman settled himself at the dining-room table, a small, leather carrying case of tools open in front of him and his face scrunched into a squint from the bright lights. Erica batted her eyes a few times as she dropped into a seat next to the professor. Mookie clipped microphones to the necklines of Gilman’s crew-neck sweater and Erica’s denim jumper. “Talk a little so we can get a sound check,” he said.
“Hello,” Erica said awkwardly.
Gilman rose to the occasion by bursting into a lecture. “The box appears to be early nineteenth century, although I’ll be better able to date it once it’s opened. It appears to be a gentleman’s caddy—”
“Yeah, yeah, save it for when we’re live,” Derrick cut him off, then glanced at Mookie, who nodded that the sound levels were good. Then they all stood around, silent and bored, waiting for the live feed to begin. Derrick didn’t wear a clip-on mike; he preferred to have his mike in his hand. It was like a weapon, long and hard, with that rounded tip, kind of—no, it wasn’t phallic. Absolutely not. He just liked holding a mike; that was all.
The town drunk’s jaw pumped as he munched on crackers in the living-room doorway. Jed Willetz loomed in the kitchen doorway like something carved out of native granite. The dining room, Derrick realized, was way too small. They should have set this up somewhere else.
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