Killer Ratings: A Susan Kaplan Mystery

by Lisa Seidman

Lu stared at the gaping hole in my ceiling but didn’t say anything. Wagner once again took out the photos and showed them to Jennifer. “He’s cute,” she said, pointing to the guy in the park. “Did one of these guys kill her? Rebecca?”

  “We don’t know that, Ms., uh, Bardos,” Lu said. I gave him credit for remembering her last name, and wondered if they went over our names in the car, quizzing each other before walking into the warehouse.

  “Well, then, why are you flashing these picture around?” Her charming smile softened the bluntness of her question. Wagner, to my surprise, smiled back. “We just wondered whether any of these men ever came around here … or possibly worked on the show in some capacity?” Jennifer shook her head. “Sorry, don’t recognize anyone. Why do you think one of these guys was hanging around here?”

  Neither of the detectives looked like they wanted to answer that question. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. “You found strange fingerprints in her office, didn’t you?” I said, pointing to the photos. “One of their prints. But he doesn’t have a record so you don’t have a mug shot. These are all casual photos so no witness is prejudiced by a mug shot—and points out the wrong man.”

  “Perhaps,” was all Lu would say. But I knew by the tone of his voice that I was right.

  “What about your bosses?” Lu asked. “Are they available?”

  “They’re in a meeting,” I said. “But if you really think this guy worked on the show, Miranda Peterson might be more helpful. Or we could go to the set.”

  The two cops looked at one another for an unspoken beat, then Wagner turned back to me. “Why don’t you show us where Ms. Peterson is? That is, if you can spare the time?”

  Was he kidding? I’d give up the rest of my life for these guys if it helped prove none of my colleagues killed Rebecca. I think Jennifer realized this as well because she said, “Go ahead, Suze. I’ll watch the phones.”

  Wagner, Lu, and I headed across the plank and into the other warehouse. The construction workers wouldn’t have even dared try to stare under my skirt if I had been wearing one. They recognized the two detectives walking behind me.

  Miranda seemed back to her normal self, greeting our presence with the semi-annoyed glance she bestowed upon anyone who interrupted her work. “When are we getting Zack’s script?” she demanded before I could open my mouth. The kindness she displayed at Sherman’s dismissal had vanished.

  “He’s writing it, Miranda,” I said. “We did have a slight tragedy that delayed us, you know.”

  For a second I wondered if slight tragedy was the wrong phrase to use, the sarcasm reminding the detectives that I had a valid reason for despising Rebecca and, thus, doing away with her. Miranda didn’t notice my sudden, guilty hesitation. “It wasn’t my decision to keep production going,” she said. “We’re two days into prep and everyone’s screaming at me for the script.”

  “I can’t write the script for him,” I told her. “I’ve been putting Act Three into the computer all day. If you want to complain, call Zack. Or Ray,” I added, feeling meanly triumphant. I knew Ray was the one person on this show Miranda couldn’t—and wouldn’t—bully.

  Miranda’s eyes dropped from mine, and I felt a moment of petty victory. Unfortunately, she did have a point. The script should’ve been finished so that the director could’ve started reading it and the casting people could have started auditioning actors for the supporting roles. Patrick needed it to break down the scenes and start working on a shooting schedule. But I worked for Zack, not Miranda, and I owed my loyalty to him.

  Wagner diplomatically cleared his throat, and Miranda looked up over my shoulder. I had forgotten all about the detectives standing behind me.

  “Miranda,” I said, “these are the two detectives investigating Rebecca’s death. They want to show you some photographs.”

  “What kind of photographs?” Miranda asked, sounding afraid of having to look at the most fearful array of murderers and molesters, rapists and serial killers.

  “We’d like to know if you’ve seen any of these men before,” Wagner said, withdrawing the photos from the envelope. “Take your time. Look at them carefully.”

  Miranda studied all six photos, but kept returning to the one of the guy in the park, biting her lower lip while drinking in the large, blue eyes, the shock of thick, dark hair, the strong, sharply-defined jaw and cheekbones. I hoped he wasn’t the murderer. He was too cute for a life of crime. But, then again, so was Ted Bundy.

  Miranda finished her perusal and looked up at the two detectives. “I’ve seen him around,” she said, pointing to the photo of Mr. Cute. “He’s one of the construction workers. His name’s Michael Keller.

  “No kidding?” I couldn’t help interrupting. “I don’t remember him.” But his name sounded familiar. I wondered why.

  Miranda shrugged like it was no big deal, but I could tell she was pleased at being able to identify the guy. “He used to come to the office occasionally. To get a drink of water or cup of coffee.”

  More likely to flirt, I thought, reading between the lines of Miranda’s smug smile.

  “His fingerprints were found in Rebecca’s office, you know.” I couldn’t help myself. She was acting like it was a privilege this guy had come in here and chatted with her. Plus, I was upset that I hadn’t recognized him myself. But I rarely looked at any of the construction workers the few times I had come across them. I was afraid eye contact would only encourage them to say things like, “Hey, little mama” or “Hi, chickie, chickie, chickie.”

  “Where would we be able to find Keller?” Wagner asked.

  “He’s probably working somewhere around the building,” Miranda said. “But I haven’t seen him for a couple of days. You might want to check with the foreman.”

  “I’ll show you where his office is,” I volunteered. Although I had never been inside the trailer, you couldn’t miss it—it sat in the far corner of the parking lot, hogging up spaces meant for Babbitt & Brooks employees.

  “Thank you, that would be helpful,” said Lu while Wagner reached out a hand for the photographs, after having Miranda put her initials and date on the back of Keller’s photo.

  “Zack’s script better be in by tomorrow,” was her parting shot at me as I escorted the two detectives back to the other warehouse and through the opened double doors leading to the parking lot and the foreman’s trailer.

  4.

  “I haven’t seen Keller around since last week,” the foreman told the two detectives as he stared with distaste at Keller’s photograph. “Or maybe it was the beginning of this one, I’m not sure.”

  The trailer was small, hot, and cramped, and the lone fly buzzing around the tiny window competed with the drone of a portable fan and the stale smell of cigarette smoke to give me the beginnings of a headache. The foreman, who grudgingly introduced himself as Ted Lombardi, was swarthy, with a five o’clock shadow and rings of sweat under the armpits of his grayish white T-shirt. He held the photo by the tips of two fingers, and I couldn’t decide whether he thought his fingerprints on the photo would somehow incriminate him in whatever it was the cops wanted Keller for, or if he disliked Keller so much he didn’t want to even have to touch his likeness on a photograph.

  “Don’t you keep records?” Lu asked. I noticed that although both detectives were unflaggingly polite, they treated the foreman with an edge of toughness that had been absent from their dealings with everyone else.

  “Not for Keller,” the foreman replied. “He wasn’t on the company’s payroll.”

  “Then who was paying him?” Lu asked.

  The foreman nodded in the direction of the warehouse. “They did. The company that’s making this thing. Romulus Television.” He didn’t look too happy about it, either.

  “Why is that?” Lu asked.

  The foreman shrugged, clearly not pleased with having to answer any sort of question about Keller. “Got me. We started working and one day I got the word that a Michael Keller was going to work
with my guys. He showed up the next day with all the right paperwork, so I put him to work.”

  “And who told you to hire him? Do you remember a name?”

  “Berg. He hired my outfit in the first place.”

  “That’s Bob Berg,” I said. “He’s the executive in charge of production. In other words, he holds the purse strings.”

  Lu jotted the name down in his notebook.

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” the foreman acknowledged. “I wasn’t too happy about it. We’re a union organization, but Keller had a card and his paycheck wasn’t coming out of my pocket.”

  “How was he to work with?”

  “Lousy. He didn’t like to work, he wasn’t good at what he did. But as I said, I wasn’t the one paying him. So I gave him simple jobs and tried to keep him out of trouble.”

  “Did he seem friendly with anyone on the show or on your crew?”

  “None of my guys had much to say to him. And we don’t deal much with the TV people.”

  “Thank you for your time,” Lu said holding out his hand, although the foreman looked like the last thing he wanted to do was shake it. Wagner, perhaps sensing this, merely nodded his head, and I scooted out the door first without making eye contact with the foreman at all.

  The gravel crunched under our shoes as we walked back in the direction of the warehouse. “Is there anything else I can show you or help you with?” I asked, enjoying my new role as police sidekick.

  “You’re sure you never saw Keller hanging around the office?” Lu asked.

  “No, I’m sorry. But—” Suddenly, I remembered why his name was familiar to me. “Rebecca’s office!” I said. “I saw his name in Rebecca’s office.” The memory had snapped into place and I didn’t have a headache anymore.

  “She wrote him a check,” I continued. “Tuesday morning, when I was cleaning her office, I found it on her desk. I paper-clipped it to her desk calendar so she wouldn’t lose it.”

  “How much was the check for? Do you remember?” Wagner asked.

  “A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty dollars. Was it for drugs, do you think?” Maybe Keller had been the one to supply Rebecca with the cocaine Sherman had found on her desk.

  Neither of the detectives answered, and I wondered what the going rate for cocaine was. Then again, it couldn’t be that much if Keller needed to moonlight as a construction worker—and a lousy one at that. Maybe the job was a front to fool the IRS, or make contacts to whom he could sell his drugs. But why would Bob “Mr. Straight-Arrow-Vote-Republican-or-Die” Berg insist the construction company hire him?

  I wanted to share these thoughts with Lu and Wagner, but before I could open my mouth they thanked me for my help and veered off in the direction of their car, a brown Ford. In script lingo we’d call it the “n.d.” sedan, n.d. meaning “nondescript.” I figured they were probably heading over to the Romulus main office in order to check out Keller’s personnel file—if he had one. Who knew what nefarious means Bob Berg used to slip Keller through the Romulus cracks?

  Before I went back inside I checked my messages and saw a text from Lily Wainess. It took me a moment and then I remembered she was the writers’ assistant before me. The one I had texted on the pretext of needing help with a work-related matter. She told me to call her, which I did, still standing in the parking lot.

  “Hello?” I heard traffic in the background and wondered if Lily was in her car.

  “Lily, hi. This is Susan Kaplan. I got your text about calling you back.”

  “Yeah, hi, Susan. What did you want to talk to me about? Can’t Jennifer or Sandy help you with it?”

  “Um, well, actually, I really wanted to talk to you about Rebecca.” There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Hello? Lily, are you there?”

  Lily finally spoke, sounding wary. “If you’re calling to tell me she’s dead, I already know that.”

  “No, it’s not about that.” Jennifer appeared at the front door, glancing around. When she saw me, she made an impatient gesture, telling me to come back in. I spoke quickly into my cell. “I just want to know … why did Rebecca hate me so much? And not just me … She seemed to have it in for Jennifer and Sandy as well.” I held up a finger to impatient Jennifer in a “one minute” gesture.

  Lily, unexpectedly, laughed. “She hated you—all of you—because of me.”

  Jennifer started to head toward me and I spoke fast and low into the phone. “Can we meet? Talk about it?”

  There was a pause then Lily, with a weary sigh, said, “I guess. There’s a Starbucks in a strip mall on Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks. Right off Fulton. Meet me there when you get out of work.” She hung up before I could thank her. When I turned around, Jennifer was in my face.

  “What are you doing out here? The phones are ringing like crazy and Zack has more pages for you.”

  “Sorry. You know the photos the detectives were showing us? The good looking guy? He’s one of the construction workers here.”

  “Did he kill Rebecca?”

  “I don’t know. But Rebecca had written him a check. I saw it in her office.”

  Jennifer’s blue eyes widened. “How did she know him?”

  I shrugged. “I guess the detectives will investigate. I thought, maybe, he was her drug dealer.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “You don’t write checks to your drug dealer.” She smiled at my naïveté. “Come on, leave the detecting to the cops. Those phones don’t answer themselves.”

  As I followed her back into the warehouse, I realized I hadn’t told her about my upcoming meeting with Rebecca’s former assistant. And I decided to say nothing unless Lily had anything useful to say.

  5.

  I found the Starbucks through an app on my smartphone, battling rush hour traffic north, from the Harbor Freeway to the Ventura Freeway, getting off at Coldwater Canyon and continuing west on Riverside Drive. It took me an hour, with stop-and-go traffic all the way, and I was jittery with nerves. The Starbucks was filled with coffee drinkers of all ages, sitting at the tables, their faces staring at their laptop screens, giant lattes clutched in their hands.

  When I had found a parking space in the strip mall, I texted Lily, letting her know I was there. I glanced at the women, hoping one of them would look up and acknowledge me. But it wasn’t until I glanced at the baristas behind the counter that I locked eyes with a woman in her late twenties at one of the cash registers who said something to the guy behind the neighboring register. He nodded and she moved around the counter toward me.

  “Susan?”

  I nodded, too stunned to speak. Not because former writers’ assistant Lily was now serving coffee at Starbucks but because she was beautiful. I mean drop-dead, she could be a model or an actress beautiful. She had dark, shoulder-length curly black hair, emerald green eyes, and smooth unblemished skin in an oval face. She was my height, which put her at 5’4”, and despite the green apron covering her body I could tell she had a figure most women would kill for. I felt hugely awkward standing next to her, embarrassed by my red hair and freckles.

  If Lily noticed I was staring she gave no sign. “Let’s go outside. I have five minutes. Ten at most.”

  Without waiting for my reply she headed out the door.

  I followed her into the shop next door to the Starbucks, another coffee shop, but filled with trays of sandwiches and salads behind glass counters, which, I imagined, is how it managed to stay in business despite its competing coffeehouse neighbor. Lily and I both ordered Diet Cokes and moved to a small table near the front window. There was one another patron in the store; everyone else, it seemed, was in Starbucks.

  Lily sipped from her Diet Coke, staring out the window at the parking lot crowded with cars, others crawling slowly down the lanes looking for an empty space. She didn’t seem inclined toward conversation so I nervously cleared my throat, crumpling the paper my straw came in.

  “Thanks for meeting with me,” I began.

  Lily turned away from the wi
ndow, regarded me appraisingly. “So, you’re my replacement.”

  I nodded.

  “Do the cops know who murdered Rebecca?” she asked.

  “If they do, they’re not telling me.”

  She lowered her eyes, sipped from her soda. Her skin glowed in the setting sun. I wondered what it was like to be so beautiful. Did she worry about bad hair days? Zits? Clearly her looks didn’t get her everything she wanted, if she was working in a Starbucks. Unless she was writing a novel about a heroine who was a barista and was there for research.

  “So, what did you want to ask me?” Lily’s question broke into my thoughts.

  “You said on the phone that Rebecca hated me—all the assistants—because of you.” She nodded. “Why?”

  Lily again glanced out the window then turned back to me.

  “What will you give me if I tell you?”

  I started at her, taken aback. “M-money? I don’t have any. You know what those jobs pay.”

  She smiled without mirth. “I’m not talking about money. I want an audition. On Babbitt & Brooks.”

  “An audition?” I repeated. “Couldn’t you get one when you were there?”

  “I tried. But then Rebecca found out …”

  She didn’t have to finish the sentence.

  “What makes you think you can get an audition now?”

  “Rebecca’s not there to stop it,” she said simply. Yikes. This girl was cold. Lily must’ve sensed my hesitation because she added, “How badly do you want to know why she hated you?”

  I wanted to know badly enough, especially if it helped me figure out what made her tick, and maybe I would learn if her hate-on for Sandy, Jennifer, and me was related to why she was murdered. “I’d need your headshot and resume,” I said, tentatively.

  “Done. I’ve got one back at the shop.

  Of course she did. You never know when a director or producer would be walking through the door, ready for his double espresso latte.

  “Okay,” I said. “I don’t know if I can guarantee you an audition, but I can at least pass your headshot on to the casting director.”