Blast from the Past

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  No, she told herself, he would have had no reason to go to her cottage. It was like she’d told Nick. He could have done anything to her he wanted on the beach. Unless he was worried about a boater or somebody else, whereas at her cottage, he could be assured of privacy.

  Tilda couldn’t imagine a worse day. She hadn’t found Leviathan, and she might have been helping a killer. Was it any surprise that she couldn’t even sleep well that night?

  Chapter 41

  Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.

  —CHUCK JONES

  THE next day was the last shooting day on the Cape, and Tilda really tried to get excited about seeing the big special effects bonanza on the beach, with Dylan O’Taine sending bolts of mystical energy from atop the lighthouse.

  Of course, they weren’t actually filming at the Monomoy Point Lighthouse—Tilda shuddered to think of the lawsuits that would result if they chipped the first bit of paint off that place. Instead, Laryea would be perched on a mocked-up tower. The bottom would just be bare scaffolding holding up a set that duplicated the lantern room of the real lighthouse.

  But after all that she hadn’t managed to accomplish, it was hard for Tilda to muster enthusiasm for doing much of anything. It was only the text message from her roommate Dianne reminding her that her share of the rent was due that motivated her into her car to drive over to the shooting location.

  From the number of cars parked haphazardly up and down the beach, Tilda decided she must have been the last person on the Cape to arrive, and it took forever to find a place to park. Then when she pulled out her camera to check the charge, she remembered that her last memory card was already full from the day she’d spent following the second-unit crew around. “Proving once again what a consummate professional I am,” she muttered to herself.

  She checked her watch and saw that she had some free time before the big booms and flashes, so she pulled out her laptop and the necessary gadgetry to download all the photos onto the computer’s hard disk so she could erase the memory card for reuse. Once that was done, she figured she might as well go ahead and copy the files onto a thumb drive for backup.

  She was reasonably sure she was just being cautious and not just moping in her car. And if she still didn’t get up and moving once all the files were in order and her camera was ready for action, it was because she wanted to take a quick look at some of the photos she’d taken to make sure that she had plenty of shots to choose from. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to have to see Joni and admit that she’d had no luck finding Leviathan. The fact that she was playing The Cure on her iPod during all the administrative activity was just a coincidence.

  At least she had some decent pictures. Laryea did look quite impressive in his costume, and there were some great shots of him talking earnestly with Joni, as if discussing important business. There were, however, no pictures of him standing next to anybody taller, despite the best efforts of Wilder and the Photo-Operative to get shots of themselves with him.

  She did have plenty of pictures of Wilder with various people at the inn: hamming it up with Nick, chatting with Hoover, posing proudly with a gaggle of female PAs. In one shot, Wilder was standing next to some techie who’d dredged up a T-shirt with the Blastoff brothers and Posit on the front.

  Tilda stopped at that last photo for a minute, looking at the design on the T-shirt. Something looked wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. On a whim, she opened up a Web browser and went to IMDb. The T-shirt design was based on the publicity still of the Blastoffs and Posit she’d looked at before, when trying to decide if Pete was Spencer Marshall, and she enlarged it as much as her laptop screen would allow. It was a promotional shot of the cheesy spaceship interior, with Laryea and Pete in their shiny Blastoff costumes and Posit standing between them.

  Laryea was easily recognizable. His face hadn’t changed much, just gained character. He was an inch or two shorter than Pete, so Tilda figured he hadn’t started wearing lifts yet. And both Blastoffs were taller than Posit.

  Which made no sense.

  Tilda knew she didn’t have a picture of Wilder with Laryea, but she remembered taking one of Wilder and Pete. She flipped through pictures until she found the one she’d snapped right after interviewing Wilder, while he and Pete were talking in the parking lot at the inn. It showed clearly that Wilder was two or three inches taller than Pete.

  How was that possible? Wilder had been a grown man when The Blastoffs was on the air. So how could Pete have been taller than Wilder then, and shorter than him now? Even in the Posit costume, which would have added an inch or two, Wilder was still shorter than Pete.

  There were no lifts on earth that could make the Wilder from twenty years ago taller than Pete, yet now he was definitely taller.

  Tilda looked back at the publicity still on the Web. Could it have been taken with somebody else in the Posit costume, maybe before Wilder was cast?

  A quick trip to YouTube scotched that idea. There were quite a few clips from The Blastoffs posted, including several complete episodes, and the Posit in the show was shorter than the Blastoff brothers. There was no way around it. Wilder couldn’t have been Posit.

  Tilda’s heart was racing nearly as fast as her thoughts as she tried to put the pieces together. How had Laryea not noticed? Hell, she knew the answer to that. He never noticed anybody! If he hadn’t recognized Pete, why would he have recognized a man who’d spent most of his time on set in an alien suit?

  Tilda knew she didn’t have it all yet—there were a dozen details that needed explaining—but she did know that there was a man running around pretending to be somebody he wasn’t, and she’d just seen how the wannabe Leviathans had acted when called out. How much angrier would somebody who’d been faking it for years be? Angry enough to kill?

  One man was already dead. If Laryea had been the target, he was still in danger, and right now, there was a cache of explosives about to go off under his feet.

  She grabbed her cell phone and dialed Dom’s number, but it went straight to voice mail. “Damn it!” Then she tried Nick, but got voice mail again. Angrily she pressed redial. “Damn it, Nick. Answer your freaking phone!”

  Only then did she remember Joni’s ruling that all cell phones be turned off during shooting. Obviously neither Nick nor Dom had forgotten.

  Damn it! She checked her watch. It was nearly time for the big battle. Even if she called the cops, they couldn’t get there fast enough, assuming that she could convince them she was right. Leaving everything but her keys and phone behind, Tilda jumped out of the car and started running toward the scaffolding the film crew had erected to fill in for the lighthouse.

  The farther she got, the thicker the crowds she was pushing her way through. She knew she wasn’t making any friends, but there was no help for it. Finally she made it to the restricted area, and lifted the rope marking it to duck under. One of Dom’s security guys appeared, but she’d seen him before. “Joe,” she said, reading the name from his shirt, “where’s Nick?”

  He pointed toward the faux Pharos, just visible from there.

  “Get on the radio and tell them to stop the shoot! Don’t let them set off those explosives!”

  Without waiting to see if he’d obeyed, she took off. With all the techs and publicity people and caterers and who knew what else, there wasn’t much more room to maneuver inside the rope than there had been outside, and there was an obscene amount of equipment to dodge around as well.

  Finally she reached yet another rope barrier, this one surrounding the lighthouse set. But Hoover was at this one, and he wouldn’t let her slip underneath. Instead he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back.

  “They’re about to go live,” he said. “You can’t go in.”

  “You’ve got to stop them!”

  But before she could even try to convince him that something terrible was going to happen, she heard the warning horn, and knew it was too late. There was a sharp crack, a series of loud pop
s like firecrackers on steroids, and then . . . Nothing. Nothing at all.

  A minute later, she heard the cussing from above. Dylan O’Taine, keeper of the mystic lighthouse Pharos, was not a happy man.

  Chapter 42

  A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

  —FRANK CAPRA

  THERE was a wave of confusion as people tried to figure out what had happened. A few minutes later Nick finally made it over to where Hoover was still keeping Tilda out of trouble, and said, “What in hell is going on? I got a message that you wanted me to abort the shoot.”

  She couldn’t even meet his eyes, she was so humiliated. “I thought he was going to try to kill Laryea.”

  “Who was?”

  “Posit. I mean, Hugh Wilder, who wasn’t Posit at all. He’s an imposter, and he must be the one who tried to kill Laryea.”

  “What?”

  “Wilder is too tall to be Posit. So he was trying to kill Laryea because—” She stopped, unable to think of any reason for Wilder to kill the man who hadn’t even noticed he was a phony. “Shit, I don’t even know what I’m saying, Nick. What happened with the explosives?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. There were supposed to be some serious blasts, but all they got was a fizzle. Joni is furious because she lost the light and they’re going to have to try again tomorrow or fake it in the studio, either of which will cost a fortune. The special effects guys are going nuts trying to figure out what went wrong. Dad is making sure security didn’t screw up. And of course Laryea . . .”

  At that moment, the man himself stomped by as best he could in the sand, cursing like the proverbial sailor. Sebastian was trying to keep up with him while offering comfort and a water bottle, both of which Laryea ignored.

  “I am not going to stand around while they figure out which asshole to fire,” Laryea said. “I am going back to the effing hotel, where I better find my dinner waiting, and I am going to take off this effing costume, and I am going to call my agent.” He pointed at Nick. “You. Where’s my driver?”

  “I’ll find him right now, sir.”

  “Forget that. You can drive me.”

  Nick swallowed a sigh and said, “Right away.” He gave Hoover a nod. “Tell Dad where I’ve gone.”

  The limo that Laryea had been using ever since the other one was impounded was parked close by, and Nick followed Laryea and Sebastian toward it.

  Tilda couldn’t figure out where her logic had gone wrong. She was sure that Wilder had killed Foster in an effort to get at Laryea, and this would have been the perfect opportunity to try again. But there had been no bomb. There hadn’t even been the planned pyrotechnics.

  Beside her, Hoover picked up his radio when it crackled, and she heard Dom’s voice saying, “It looks like somebody ran off with most of the explosives.”

  Missing explosives? Nick was opening the car door for Laryea and Sebastian. Hadn’t Wilder said something about explosives? No, fires. He’d said Pete liked to set fires.

  Except that she no longer believed anything the old man said. He’d probably been lying to try to set Pete up, just like he’d tried to blame Foster’s death on him. Laryea and Sebastian were in the limo now, and Nick had just shut the door.

  Wilder must have been meaning to blame Pete when the explosion went off and killed Laryea. Except it didn’t go off.

  Nick had opened the front door and was reaching behind the sun visor to pull out the keys. Suddenly Tilda knew where the missing explosives were.

  “Nick!” she screamed, and slipped away from Hoover to run for the limo. “Don’t start the car! Get away from the car! There’s a bomb!”

  People scattered when they heard the word bomb, but Nick just froze.

  She reached him and grabbed his arm. “The stolen explosives!” she said, trying to talk and breathe at the same time. “There’s a bomb in the limo.”

  She expected questions, even disbelief, but instead he left the front door open and went to open the back door.

  “Mr. Laryea, Sebastian, I think you should get out of the limo. We have reason to believe there is a bomb on board.”

  “This is absurd,” Sebastian sputtered. “If you don’t get in the car this minute, I will have you fired. In fact, I will make sure that neither you nor your father ever works again!”

  Nick didn’t argue with him. He just grabbed the smaller man by the front of his shirt and dragged him out of the limo. While Sebastian was squirming and arguing, Tilda leaned into the limo and in a very quiet voice said, “Mr. Laryea, if you do not get out of this limo, I am going to pull out my phone and I am going to tweet to the world that you have been lying about your height. I will tweet about the lifts in your shoes and the elevator boots you’re wearing in the movie. I will then go to Facebook and post it there. How long do you think it would take to go viral? How long do you think it would take Perez Hilton to hear about it?”

  Despite the amount of makeup Laryea was wearing, he blanched, and without saying a word, climbed out of the limo.

  Hoover showed up, and he and Nick kept everybody clear while Nick called his father and the cops, who in turn called for experts that quickly verified that the limo had been rigged to explode as soon as Nick turned the key. Given the amount of explosives involved, not only would everyone in the limo have been killed, it was likely that a fair percentage of the film crew would have died, too, or at least been badly injured.

  It was after the bomb squad had sent everybody to a safe distance that Tilda saw Hugh Wilder hovering in the crowd. She didn’t quite see red, even if that was the cliché, but she heard a roaring in her ears that could not be denied.

  She pointed at him. “You, Wilder. Get your ass over here!”

  The old man stared at her. “What . . . ?”

  Tilda went to him instead. If she’d been thinking straight, she might have considered the idea that approaching a murderer directly was not the brightest thing she’d ever done. But she wasn’t thinking straight. She wasn’t thinking at all.

  “You son of a bitch! You cowardly, lying sack of shit! How many more people were you planning to kill?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The hell you don’t. I know damned well that you were the one driving the limo that killed Foster, not Pete Ellis. And you were the one who broke into my cottage to come after me, and I know you were planning to stab a lot more than my pillow.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “The only reason you didn’t is because I got lucky. But did you stop there? No, you stole explosives from the set, didn’t you? And you put a freaking bomb in the limo! I heard what the police said. You’d have killed everybody in the limo, and God knows how many more people.”

  “No, I—”

  “And was it for money or revenge or something that was even worth killing over? No, it was so you could keep playing dress-up in a freaking fur suit!”

  “I’m not—”

  “And it’s not even your suit! You’re not Posit—you never were Posit.”

  The accusations of murder had confused Wilder, but it was Tilda’s revealing his deception over the TV role that really got to him. Fat tears started rolling down his face. “No, no! That’s not true. I was Posit. Of course I was Posit.”

  She scoffed. “The man who played Posit was a foot shorter than you are.”

  “I am Posit. I am!”

  “What you are is a murderer.”

  “I had to—” He stopped himself. “I didn’t mean to kill Foster. It was just that Spencer knew—I mean, Pete. He knew! He knew, and he would have told, and they would have taken Posit away from me. I couldn’t let him take Posit away from me.”

  “What about me? How was I going to take Posit away from you?”

  “I was just trying to scare you,” he said. “Everybody but you believed Pete was driving the limo, and I thought that if I scared you, you’d believe it, too.”

  “Yeah, like I believe you were just goin
g to scare me. If I was dead, you could be sure I wouldn’t help Pete, couldn’t you?”

  “No, no. I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

  “Then what about the bomb? Were you planning to blame that on Pete, too? That’s why you told me all that crap about him setting fires when he was a kid, isn’t it? So it would look as if he’d set the bomb, not you.”

  “I meant to be here to stop anybody from getting into the limo—I didn’t think John would want to leave so early. I was going to save everybody. But I had to stop and sign autographs for the kids. I do everything for the kids. The kids love Posit—they love me.”

  “You think they’ll love you now, when they know you killed one man, and tried to kill more?”

  “I didn’t want anybody to get hurt,” he insisted. “Posit never hurts people.”

  Tilda knew damned well that Wilder was lying—he’d had no intention of saving anybody. The awful thing was, she didn’t know if he was lying to her or to himself. “You’re not Posit,” she said again.

  Wilder kept blubbering, and the cops took him away, treating him far more gently than he deserved in Tilda’s opinion. She knew she should have felt some pity for him, but she just didn’t have it in her.

  Later on, both Dom and Nick would applaud her brilliance in going after Wilder to make him crack in public that way. Otherwise, it would have been hard to catch him. There really hadn’t been much in the way of physical evidence. Wilder hadn’t been seen in the limo, and he hadn’t left any prints. The same went for the knife attack on Tilda’s pillow: no witnesses, no prints, no helpful DNA or security camera tapes. Maybe they would have found something on the stolen explosives, but since the best way to get rid of a bomb was to detonate it, any useful evidence wasn’t likely to be around long.

  Tilda just nodded and pretended that getting Wilder to implicate himself had been part of her master plan. But this time, she was the imposter. The real story was that after seeing Nick come within seconds of blowing himself to hell, she’d nearly been mad enough to kill.