Killer Ratings: A Susan Kaplan Mystery

by Lisa Seidman

  The procession from the parking lot to the entrance, with its line of limos and celebrities, reminded me of the procession to the Emmy Awards. Tabitha made an appearance with her husband, an ex-actor turned restaurant owner, still recognizable from reruns of his old series, The Force, about a group of rookie police officers. Mitch Barron, the actor who played the detective Babbitt and Brooks were always tangling with on their cases, arrived with a vacant-looking but gorgeous blonde. I also saw Ben Platner, who played Tabby’s husband in the series, as well as Ginny Morris, who played the ladies’ ditzy yet competent legal secretary. Clumps of people stood at the entrance to the church, ogling the actors as they arrived and, I’m sure, barely restraining themselves from screaming when they recognized Gail, Tabby, and Mitch. Since the church monitors weren’t shooing them away, I assumed they were members of Rebecca’s congregation or family.

  “Are you here to pay your last respects or are you here to gawk?” Jennifer said, approaching from behind.

  “I’m here to gawk,” I said, turning to face her and a good-looking guy in his late-twenties. “You think anyone else famous will show up?”

  “If she screwed them, they might.” Jennifer wore an elegant black pants suit consisting of a tuxedo jacket, white silk shell underneath, and fashionably baggy trousers. Her fingernails were a surprisingly modest pink. She introduced me to her companion. “Susan, this is Steve. Steve, this is Susan.”

  Aha! The mysterious boyfriend. I shook hands with a tall, muscular guy with blond hair, and a wide, white-toothed grin.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you,” I said to Steve, trying not to stare at his body. His was a stunner. He clothed it in pressed Levi’s and a white Banana Republic waiter’s jacket. The black tee shirt underneath was, I assumed, his one concession to the funereal occasion.

  “You, too,” replied Steve. We stared at each other, smiling. Apparently Steve had run the gamut of his conversational capabilities.

  Jennifer slid her arm through his. “Well, shall we see what all the fuss is about?”

  “Look for Michael Keller,” I told her as we strolled three abreast past the reporters and into the church. Jennifer and Steve were so good-looking I could tell people wanted to recognize them but couldn’t.

  “Rebecca’s drug connection,” Jennifer confided to Steve just as we passed someone busily taking notes.

  I shushed her, mortified.

  “No one heard me,” Jennifer replied. But her voice was defensive, so I knew she understood—and was probably regretting her social faux pas.

  We entered the church. Morning sun slanted through the stained glass windows and people stood in clumps, quietly talking. Knowing this group, they were probably making movie deals. A middle-aged couple stood next to the first pew, and Ray and Gail were speaking to them. Rebecca’s parents. They were taking Rebecca’s body home to Michigan that afternoon, and I was relieved to see no casket sitting at the front of the church. Not that it would be open if there were. I doubted any surgeon would be skilled enough to stitch Rebecca back together again like new.

  Sandy sat alone in a pew, dressed in a black, shapeless cotton dress, with a wide-brimmed, black straw hat on her head, looking a bit like one of the frumpier royals. She was anxiously looking over her shoulder, and, when she saw us, began waving. Jennifer, with Steve in tow, started to join her, but I hung back.

  “Save me a seat,” I told them. I gave a brief smile to Sandy and went on ahead to greet Rebecca’s parents.

  Ray was stepping back as I moved forward and he stepped on my toe, his body bumping into mine. “Oh, I’m sor—” he began to say then noticed it was me. “Susan, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “Sure, no problem,” I said, even though my ankle hurt like hell and I was afraid to look down in case I saw a run in my stocking. Rebecca’s mother smiled in polite sympathy as Ray moved off after first squeezing my shoulder in further apology. Gail didn’t even notice me as she gave another polite good-bye to the Saunders and moved off with Ray.

  “Mrs. Saunders?” I asked. “I’m Susan Kaplan. Rebecca’s assistant. We’ve talked on the phone.”

  The woman’s face lit up in a genuine smile. We had had quite a few conversations, Mrs. Saunders and I. Rebecca didn’t have a personal office phone number, so, even though I wasn’t officially her assistant until right before her murder, I did take messages for her on the Babbitt & Brooks line. Mrs. Saunders would call Rebecca at the office when Rebecca wasn’t answering her cell. Rebecca would tell me to invent an excuse for why she couldn’t talk, and her mom and I would end up chatting. To my surprise, I liked Rebecca’s mother and couldn’t understand how she could spawn a she-devil like Rebecca.

  “Susan,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming.” At the end of every conversation I had with her, there would be an awkward pause before we said our good-byes, and Mrs. Saunders would say, “Tell Rebecca we love her.” It always broke my heart. In person, her mother was small and plump, but she had Rebecca’s big blue eyes and thick brown hair, although hers was turning grey.

  “Frank, this is Susan Kaplan. Rebecca’s secretary.”

  It was obvious Mr. Saunders was not holding up as well as his wife. Tall and angular, he was slightly stooped, his hazel eyes watery. The man turned vaguely in my direction, mechanically offered me his hand, and said, “How do you do?”

  He was drunk. The fumes rolled from his breath to my nose in ever-growing waves. I noticed the broken capillaries in his cheeks, the saggy skin under his chin, the deceptive rosiness of his complexion that couldn’t quite mask the sallowness underneath. What had looked like grief from afar, I realized, was actually years of alcoholism. Rebecca had apparently gotten her looks from her mother and her addiction from her father.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I said shaking his hand. His palm was moist, and I forced myself not to wipe my own against my skirt. “Rebecca’s told me so much about you both.”

  Actually, Rebecca had said very little about her parents, but Mrs. Saunders, at least, seemed pleased, and she offered me another tremulous smile. “She was such a darling girl. We’re … we’re going to miss her.” To my horror, her composure started to crack. I turned to Mr. Saunders for help, but he was gazing reflectively into the pews.

  “That Neely girl is not as pretty as she is on TV,” he said, loud enough for the people in the first three rows to hear.

  “Lower your voice, dear.” Mrs. Saunders spoke anxiously as she gently touched her husband’s arm. “People can hear you.”

  “Let ’em,” Rebecca’s father said, jerking his arm away from her touch. “What do I care what people think?”

  Mrs. Saunders pursed her mouth, the wrinkles edged alongside revealing years of suppressed anger and pain. She slid her eyes away from him and turned back to me.

  “He’s taking this so hard,” she said by way of explanation.

  I smiled politely and nodded, said something inane, and moved away. I felt like I had just gotten to know Rebecca a lot better these past few days after her death, and I immediately wanted to bury my new insights. It was getting harder and harder to hate her. Instead, I was starting to understand—and even feel sorry for her.

  I tried to listen politely when the minister began his sermon. But it was hard to digest the list of Rebecca’s virtues without remembering all the times she was cruel to me—and Sandy and Jennifer. Maybe I had a better idea as to why she lashed out at us but we hadn’t been the ones hurting her. I gazed around the church, looking for Michael Keller or anyone else interesting. Patrick Hager sat by himself, looking stylish in a sharply creased black suit that accented his lean figure.

  Charles and his wife sat in back; I had noticed them when I first entered the church. Apparently his newly-thawed relationship with Ray didn’t include sitting together at Rebecca’s service. Or perhaps Charles had made an appearance for form’s sake and intended to slip out unnoticed as soon as the minister wrapped things up. Ray, Winifred, and Gail sat in the second
row behind Rebecca’s parents, and I realized Gail must’ve heard Mr. Saunders’ remark. I wondered if the parents knew of the lesbian allegations between Gail and Rebecca? Had her father’s comment about Gail been his way of denying the relationship? Or at least expressing his disapproval of it?

  I continued to study them. Rebecca’s father nodded his head repeatedly as if agreeing with everything the minister said about Rebecca’s wonderfulness, or, more likely, trying not to doze off from the excess liquor he had imbibed that morning. Mrs. Saunders, unlike her husband, sat ramrod straight, her gaze tilted up and unmoving as she raptly listened to the eulogy. The two of them looked harmless and yet I wondered if they were inadvertently responsible for their daughter’s death. Their marriage appeared to follow all the rules of alcoholism and co-dependency, and certainly Rebecca had seemed to be following in their footsteps. There was no doubt she had inherited her father’s addictive personality, which may have led to her death at the hands of her drug dealer. Or, it could have been the dependency on the men in her life, developed from observing her mother. Having an affair with Ray, who was unavailable because he was married, stealing Zack away from Peggy and then not wanting him when he wanted her, or even sleeping with Gail— forming a relationship that she knew would be frowned upon by both her parents and society—was not exactly a healthy way to live.

  The weird thing is, I saw a lot of Mrs. Saunders in Peggy as well. Peggy pitifully hung on to Zack who didn’t want her anymore. Now that Rebecca was dead, Peggy seemed to think she might have a shot at getting Zack back. I had a frightening thought: Would Peggy have killed Rebecca if she thought that would bring Zack back to her? I searched for Peggy in the pews. She and Zack were sitting a few rows ahead, next to the center aisle. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Peggy was holding Zack’s hand. Zack was staring down at his shoes, lost in thought. He looked miserable. Even though he had hurt Peggy by dumping her for Rebecca, I realized it didn’t matter. In the end he hadn’t gotten what he wanted, either: no Rebecca, and now smothered by Peggy. Why had I thought men were invulnerable to hurt? Had Rebecca exposed a particular man’s vulnerability which in turn had gotten her killed?

  The mourners started to stand and I realized with a start that the eulogy was over. While Jennifer, Sandy, and Steve went off to find the bathrooms, I waited outside the church. We were going to lunch as soon as they came out. People milled around the parking lot, chatting, shaking hands, enjoying the warmth of the October morning, not quite ready to leave. The media had retreated to the street, their vans blocking the right-hand lane of Franklin Avenue, holding up traffic. I saw the detectives, Lu and Wagner, standing unobtrusively near the parking lot entrance, ignored by the mourners, observing everything.

  Cliff Rosen was congratulating Tabitha and Gail on the terrific ratings, talking of doing a major two-hour cliffhanger at the end of the season. Tabitha’s husband was off to one side, ostensibly chatting with Mitch Barron, but sneaking quick admiring peeks at the blond girlfriend’s cleavage.

  Ray was immersed in conversation with two men I didn’t recognize. I caught odd, meaningless phrases from them: “two hour cliffhangers,” “keeping the heat on,” “children who kill their parents.”

  “Ratings, ratings, ratings,” Patrick Hager said as he joined me at the side of the church. He rubbed his hand through his white-blond hair. “It’s starting to sound like a nasty four-letter word.”

  “Who are those guys?” I asked, nodding to the three-piece suitors Ray was talking to.

  “The network head honchos. I should go over and introduce myself.”

  I almost asked him why before remembering he wanted to direct. Nothing like networking the network at a funeral. Rebecca was probably turning over in her casket.

  “Did those guys know Rebecca?” I asked him.

  “They know Ray,” Patrick replied, turning his attention back to me. “A vicious rumor has been circling the offices that Zack’s script won’t be ready for us on Monday.”

  “It’s not a rumor. It’s the truth. They’re beefing it up for that nasty four-letter word.”

  Patrick sighed. “I suppose I don’t need to remind you that we’re already four days into prep.”

  Prep, short for preparation, was the work done on a script the week before it was shot: holding meetings with the director and production heads to discuss possible problems and answer questions regarding locations, props or costumes; casting guest starring roles; setting up a shooting schedule; and finding locations. Since each B&B episode was filmed in seven days, the scripts normally had a seven-day prep. But because Zack’s show was technically four days into prep even without a script, the script would only have three days of real prep time once it was distributed to the cast, crew, and production heads. Patrick had a right to be nervous and concerned. But there was nothing I could do about it.

  “Yell at Ray,” I said. “I’m only the assistant.”

  “Yell at Ray for what?” asked Zack as he joined us.

  “There’s the man of the hour,” I said to Patrick. “Talk to him.”

  Zack looked at Patrick expectantly. He still looked tired, but some of his old sparkle had returned to his eyes. I wondered if it was because he had managed to shake Peggy.

  Patrick, I knew, could cheerfully have strangled me, but he turned to Zack with a smile and said as mildly as possible, “Your script. Do you have any idea when we can expect it?”

  Zack shrugged. “It’s changed since Wednesday. I think you’ll have it by Tuesday.” Which meant both Zack and I would be working late on Monday. Fun, fun, fun.

  “Why does it have to change?” asked Patrick. “I thought the story was perfectly acceptable.”

  “Ray and the network don’t think it will up hold up against the ratings. And it’s an important script.”

  Zack’s original script was about a bounty hunter. Sandy said that Ray was looking for a major movie star to play the role which would then possibly spin off into its own series.

  “I think this ratings business is getting out of hand,” Patrick said. “The show was excellent before. There’s no need to change anything.”

  “I agree,” Zack said, sounding unhappy. “I think everyone is forgetting what that twenty-five share is really all about.”

  Patrick’s sympathetic silence was a sign of agreement, and I realized that these were the only two people who genuinely mourned Rebecca’s death. I didn’t count Gail. I still didn’t know whether I had gotten the truth or the performance of the century from her.

  “Do you think Gail is a suspect?” I asked the two men.

  “No,” Zack answered. “I think that construction worker is.”

  “You know about him?” I asked.

  Zack nodded. “The police came by my house last night and showed me some pictures. Asked if I’d recognize any of them from hanging around the office.

  “So did you?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Zack said. “One of them was hanging around the office the day of Rebecca’s death.”

  Both Patrick and I looked at him with interest. “What did he want?” I asked.

  Zack shrugged. “Beats me. I was talking to Rebecca in her office. The phones were ringing like crazy. We couldn’t figure out where you’d gone. So I stuck my head out to look and saw him hovering around your desk. I thought he might have been waiting for you, but as soon as he saw me he took off.”

  “Did you tell Rebecca?” Patrick asked.

  “I was going to say something. But she was answering the phones and pretty upset about it. In fact …” But then, inexplicably, Zack trailed off.

  “In fact what?” I prompted. Zack was looking at Patrick but I had the feeling he wasn’t actually seeing him. It was as if he were remembering something, and it took a few seconds for my question to sink in before he turned to look at me, slowly coming back to the present.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. I lost my train of thought.”

  “So do you think Keller killed Rebecca?” I asked h
im.

  “I don’t know. Maybe not. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you Monday.” Zack turned around and walked rapidly to his car.

  “Where’s Zack going?” Peggy appeared from over Patrick’s shoulder, and I wondered whether she had been the reason he had lost his train of thought.

  “Home, I guess,” I said.

  Patrick was also staring after Zack, a puzzled look on his face. “That was curious,” he said.

  “What was?” Peggy asked.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m being rude.” Patrick offered her a friendly, concerned smile. “How are you holding up, Peggy?”

  For a minute I thought Peggy’s face was going to crumple into tears but she struggled for self-control and managed to offer Patrick a shaky smile in return. “I’m okay. But I’m worried about Zack.”

  The three of us turned to watch as Zack found his car, a mint condition, 1964 Ford Mustang convertible, and drove out of the lot.

  “I hope he’s not leaving you behind,” I said to Peggy.

  “No, I brought my own car,” she said.

  “Did the police talk to you about Michael Keller?” I asked.

  She nodded. “But I didn’t recognize him.”

  “I think he’s their number one suspect. But Zack thinks he may not have done it.”

  “Maybe Zack knows something we don’t,” Patrick said. Although his tone was light, Peggy looked at him sharply, her eyes wide in fear.

  “No,” she said. “He doesn’t know anything. He can’t.”

  Then Peggy, too, spun on her heel and walked rapidly to her car. Patrick and I stared after her in surprise.

  “Is it something in the water?” I asked him.

  “It’s something,” he said.

  7.

  I related the mysterious reactions of Zack and Peggy to Sandy, Jennifer, and Steve over lunch at the Cat & Fiddle, a dark-timbered, pub-like restaurant located in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard. No one could puzzle through the reasons behind their attitudes, although the theory was bandied about—mostly by Jennifer—that Zack knew Keller hadn’t killed Rebecca because Zack himself had.