Killer Mousse

by Melinda Wells

  “When he’s caught, we’ll find out.” As Mickey opened the door, he added, “Now go do a great show. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  37

  My show’s theme music was full of eerie notes tonight. A long, sinister “boo” and soft, maniacal laughter accompanied the slightly discordant melody. Quinn Tanner’s new recording was a good touch for our Halloween show.

  As the tune was beginning to fade down, I entered the set in my cat costume and waved at the expanded audience. Every one of the original thirty seats was filled, and a dozen more had been set up. These formed a new front row just for the children. Most of them were from my Mommy and Me classes, so I knew that the adults sitting immediately behind them were their parents, ready to grab a child if one suddenly decided to get up and wander around.

  Ernie Ramirez was at Camera One and Jada Powell operated Camera Two. A pair of large monitors, one on either side of the set, faced the audience to enable everyone to see a close-up of what I’d be concocting.

  “Hi,” I said, “I’m Della Carmichael. Welcome to this special Halloween edition of In the Kitchen with Della. Tonight our subject is scar-rrr-y treats. Let’s get cooking.”

  In the far corner of the third row, I saw Faye Bond and Gilmer York sitting together. He whispered something to her; she smiled at him. Mickey would probably think that little exchange was “scary.”

  “First up,” I said, “we’re going to bake devilish red velvet cupcakes that we’ll decorate with ghosts and bats and creepy crawlies: treats that give you the shivers. For the red velvet cupcakes, we prepare the batter for a red velvet cake, but pour it into cupcake pans instead of regular round cake molds. Cakes made from scratch usually taste better than mix cakes, and they’re just about as easy. Think: ‘easy scratch’ and that will take the fear away. Here’s a tip: The two eggs, the two sticks of butter, and the cup of buttermilk”—I indicated the ingredients on the prep counter as I mentioned them—“should all be at room temperature before you begin.”

  As I beat the sugar and the butter together with the hand mixer, then added the eggs, cocoa, and red food coloring, I explained what I was doing. At the same time, I was keeping an eye on the audience.

  Detective Hall stood between Camera One and the monitor. In that spot, he had an unobstructed view of the set and, by turning his head, of the spectators, too.

  Scattered through the seats, I saw Officer Cutler, the woman who was the first uniform to responded to George Hopkins’s 911 call, and also three men in their twenties who were wearing casual clothes but who looked like police officers. Others might not pick them out as such, but I’d been married to a member of the LAPD for twenty years and recognized the similar short haircuts and the intense concentration of young gladiators on duty.

  I didn’t catch sight of John anywhere.

  Smiling, chatting, and recounting the story of how I learned to make red velvet cake from my grandmother—and once made the mistake of using the dregs of an old bottle of wine vinegar instead of the correct white distilled vinegar in the batter, with awful results—I continued the process of combining and mixing until the batter was glossy and ready to pour.

  I saw that Liddy was in the same place where she’d been standing last week, behind Camera Two. Once again, my loyal friend was smiling at me with encouragement.

  Although I had no reason to expect it, I’d thought that NDM might come to the studio tonight, but he wasn’t here. He hadn’t said anything about it, but then we hadn’t talked since he left my house at four thirty this morning.

  Was it only this morning? The day had been so busy, it seemed as though it already had been forty-eight hours long.

  Pushing personal thoughts away, I distributed the red velvet cupcake batter into a prepared twelve-cup baking pan, slid it into the oven, and brought up the already baked cupcakes from where they’d been resting on the back counter.

  “Here are some that I baked earlier, to show you how they look when they’re finished and cool.”

  I turned them out onto a platter and demonstrated how to assemble creepy creatures to put on the cupcakes.

  “First, we cover the tops with frosting: chocolate, vanilla, and bloodred to drip down the sides. We get the ‘blood’ by stirring a few drops of this red food coloring—the same kind that I used in our devilish red cake batter—into some of the vanilla frosting.”

  Next, I showed them how to shape marshmallows into ghosts and skulls, using mini chocolate chips for the eyeholes.

  In my earpiece, I heard Quinn start the countdown for the first commercial break.

  “Okay, kids,” I said, “we’re all going to have some of these tasty creations later. But when we come back in a couple of minutes—and your parents are going to hate me for this—I’m going to show you how to gross out your friends.”

  That elicited wild “yeahs” from the children and groans from the parents.

  While we were off the air, I reached down to the shelf below the prep counter and brought out two large plastic containers and removed the tops. No one in the seats out front could see that one was full of peeled grapes and the other of thick spaghetti.

  Waiting for the red light to come back on, I spoke to the kids, asking what they would be wearing for Halloween. This was a trick I used in teaching the cooking classes that included children: You keep their attention by getting them to talk about themselves.

  Commercials over. Camera One’s red light came on.

  I smiled into the lens and said, “Welcome back. I’m Della Carmichael, and this is our special Halloween In the Kitchen with Della. Now, you kids in the front row. I want a couple of volunteers. Who is daring enough to come up here and, with your eyes closed, stick your hands into my bowls of horror?”

  Lots of giggling and nudging. One hand went up. Then another. A girl and a boy.

  “Okay,” I said, pointing to those two. “Let’s see how brave you are.”

  Camera Two swung around to catch the young volunteers as they left their seats and approached me. In our classes, these children always had been comfortable with me, so I wasn’t concerned about the game I was going to play with them. I wouldn’t have done this with a child I didn’t know.

  I asked the girl, “Would you like to go first?” She nodded slowly, a little nervous but full of the spirit of adventure. Even though I knew it, I asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Olivia,” she said softly.

  “Olivia, that’s a pretty name.” Turning to the boy, I asked, “And what’s your name, young man?”

  “Brian.”

  “When I was little, I had a boyfriend named Brian. Are you married?”

  “No!” He shook his head with such vehemence that the audience laughed.

  “Okay, Olivia and Brian, close your eyes. That’s right. Good. Olivia, give me your hand.” She did, but tentatively. I guided it to the bowl of peeled grapes. “Now put your hand right in here.”

  She did, with a shivery squeal of “Eeewww.”

  “Eeewww is right,” I said. “You’re holding a handful of eyeballs!”

  Little Olivia screamed and jerked her hand out, but when she opened her eyes and she saw the real contents of the bowl, she giggled.

  Brian still had his eyelids squeezed tight. “Do me! Do me!” He was practically jumping up and down with excitement.

  “Brian, you certainly are brave.” I took his hand and guided it toward the bowl of spaghetti. “Now reach in—reach deep.”

  He did.

  “Squish your hand around,” I told him. “Do you have any idea what you’re holding?”

  Brian shook his head. “No.”

  “It’s a bowl full of big, long, juicy…worms!”

  Brian said, “Yuck,” but he kept squishing, and he was grinning.

  “I guess Brian must really like fat, juicy worms,” I said.

  The audience was chuckling. As we went to the next commercial break, I cleaned the children’s ha
nds with paper towels, escorted them back to their chairs, and showed the audience the real food.

  I returned to my prep counter and organized the candies and cookies for the next segment.

  When Camera Two’s red light came on, I said, “Now we’re going to turn red gumdrops into devils, make spiders out of black licorice, and decorate sugar cookies with spiderwebs made out of melted chocolate.”

  I moved down the counter and picked up several strings of the licorice. Before I could make the first twist, there was a bright flash in the rigging above me as one of the powerful bulbs burst. The heavy light casing crashed down onto the counter. With a sickening lurch, I realized it was the very spot where I’d been standing scant seconds before.

  Too surprised—or too shocked—to be afraid, I grinned at Camera Two and said, “Welcome to the thrills of live television. We just lost one of our lights, folks. That’s all.”

  In my earpiece, I heard Quinn yell at the engineer, “Punch up fourteen!” On the small monitor in front of my counter, I saw a commercial for auto insurance go out over the air.

  Hall started toward me, and in the audience, the North Hollywood police contingent stood up, but he waved them back down. A few of the parents had gasped when the light fell, but otherwise they were staying calm so that the children didn’t panic. Luckily, other than the flying ghost and the witch’s broom, there was nothing above their heads that might fall.

  Over the loud speaker from the director’s booth, we all heard Quinn Tanner say, “Keep your places. No one was hurt. Once in a great while a little mishap will occur.”

  Hall ignored her command and was around to my side of the counter in seconds.

  Right behind him, having raced down from the director’s control booth, was Mickey Jordan, eyes blazing with fury.

  “What the—” Realizing that children were in the room, he swallowed the expletive on the tip of his tongue and instead growled, “What happened?”

  Detective Hall slipped on a pair of latex gloves; I thought he must keep them in every pocket. He picked up the light and the wire attached to it and peered at them.

  He said quietly to Mickey and me, “This just looks like an old wire. I’ll take it to the lab, but I don’t see any evidence of tampering.”

  “So it was only an accident?” I asked.

  “Looks that way right now, but I want my people to go over all the rigging up there.”

  Mickey balled his hands into fists. “The bastard I bought this channel from never replaced anything. Maintenance? It’s like he never heard the word.”

  Outside of camera range, a studio electrician had opened up a ladder, climbed it, and was aiming a handheld spotlight so that it filled in the illumination we’d lost when the light casing fell. I saw him speak softly into his mobile phone.

  Quinn’s voice came over the loud speaker again. “We’re ready to broadcast. Della, get back into your place. Mickey, Mister Hall, please clear the set so we can do our final segment.”

  Using one sheet of paper towel to brush tiny shards of fallen glass from the burst bulb off of my prep counter, I caught the sharp little bits in a second sheet I held below the edge. Then I balled them up and dropped them into the trash container. At the moment, there was nothing I could do about the pieces that crunched under my feet, but I’d make sure that the cleaning crew swept them up.

  Hall took the fallen light with him as he and Mickey stepped back behind Camera One. The red light went on.

  I’d made the decision not to refer to the incident again, so I said brightly, “In the time we have left, we’re going to make our monsters and decorate our cookies. Then everyone in the audience will have little bags of goodies to take home. Even the grown-ups.”

  The show finished without any further problems. As the end credits rolled on the screen, I began passing around the platters of decorated cookies and cupcakes, and handing out the take-home bags. The children chose what they wanted while the adults applauded.

  Except for the near miss, the Halloween show had gone as planned.

  As I smiled at the spectators and waved good night, I noticed that at some point Gilmer York and Faye had left the studio.

  When the members of the audience, excepting Hall, his people, and Liddy, had filed out, Stan Evans closed the studio door and stood in front of it. His mouth was turned down and his lower lip stuck out in a pout. Or perhaps he was simply exhausted from having had to stay awake all night, guarding my house.

  Quinn Tanner came down from the control booth, conferred with Mickey, and addressed the two electricians on the scene. She pointed to the racks of lights above the set. “No one goes home,” she told them, “until every single thing up there is checked for stability. Not only on this set, but also on Car Guy’s. Tomorrow morning, before anyone steps onto either of the sets in front, I want everything there checked, too.”

  Liddy and I were in the dressing room where I packed the tote bag with the clothes I’d worn to the studio.

  “I’m too tired to change again,” I said. “Since I’m wearing a cat costume three days before Halloween, please try not to get stopped for speeding.”

  In a teasing tone, she said, “I wonder if there’s a law against being disguised as an animal when it’s not Halloween.”

  The door was open, but Detective Hall knocked anyway.

  “Come in,” I said.

  “No. I wanted to say that you two can go home. We’ll examine the wire attachment, but I don’t think there was any crime in that falling light. Except neglect. I’ve told Jordan he has two weeks to make sure everything in the studio is the way it should be, because then I’m sending a city inspector to check it out.”

  Liddy said, “So it was an accident—no one tried to hurt Della tonight?”

  “Things fall.” Detective Hall looked at me, and with just a hint of a smile on his lips, he added, “As the man said, ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’”

  That night I dreamed of cigars: cigars that exploded into the air, and fell to earth in pieces of what had once been a Mustang.

  38

  Liddy picked me up Friday morning for our trip to the Jeep dealership.

  “Now when you see something you love, don’t tell Derek you love it,” Liddy cautioned. “We can get an even better deal if he thinks he’s talking you into something.”

  I smiled, remembering that about eighteen years ago I’d had this same conversation with Mack, but in reverse. We were on our way to look for the Mustang he’d always wanted. As excited as a teenager, he’d told me, “When we get to the lot, I’m going to play it as though I’m not really interested in a Mustang, but I’m just there because I’m looking at lots of different makes. As soon as I spot the one I want, that’s when I’ll start criticizing it. Play along with me, okay? Back me up in whatever I say?”

  I promised. Then we got to the lot and strolled down a line of preowned Mustangs. As soon as Mack spotted the one he wanted he said to the salesman, “That’s it! How much?” The result was that while Mack negotiated a little, I knew that he wanted that particular car more than he wanted the best possible deal on it. In the end, the salesman was happy, which secretly I felt wasn’t good news for us. But Mack was happy, and that’s what mattered. He treasured and babied that car until the day he died.

  Sloan’s Jeeps was on Vineland Avenue, in the San Fernando Valley, not far from the Better Living Channel. The dealership covered most of a city block along Vineland. Festooned with bright red, green, and blue triangular flags flapping in the breeze all along its length, Sloan’s Jeeps was impossible to miss.

  Liddy turned into the driveway and stopped next to the bungalow-style office.

  “There’s Derek Sloan,” she said, pointing to an exceptionally good-looking man in his early forties who stood in the office doorway, making a note on a clipboard. His skin was the color of Godiva chocolate. He wore a custom-tailored sports jacket the color of Cream of Wheat, and brown twill slacks. If I’d seen him anywhere else, I would
have guessed he was an actor.

  Sloan looked up, saw Liddy, and grinned. Radiating good cheer, he headed toward us as we got out of her SUV.

  “Hi, Derek,” Liddy said. “This is my friend, Della Carmichael. She wants to see your best Jeeps.”

  I extended my hand to Derek Sloan; he took it in a warm grasp. “I want to see your most practical Jeeps,” I said, hoping that he would correctly interpret my choice of the word “practical” to mean “economical.”

  He patted my hand that was still in his, and said, “Got it.” He let go. “Now, what kind of vehicle are you looking for? I mean, what are your daily needs?”

  Liddy jumped in and explained that I ran a cooking school and so had to cart boxes to my classes.

  “I don’t want anything too big,” I said. “I’m used to small cars.”

  “Were you planning to keep your present car or trade it in?”

  “Neither,” I said. I didn’t feel like telling him that my Mustang had been reduced to hunks of barely identifiable metal. Although I hadn’t thought to ask her to, Liddy remained discreetly silent.

  “Okay,” Sloan said. “Let’s take a walk around the lot and you tell me what speaks to you.”

  “I like the way you put that,” I said, and began to feel more comfortable in this venture.

  Derek Sloan’s property was a festival of bright, gleaming vehicles in vivid colors.

  As the three of us worked our way up one aisle and down another, I said, “I had no idea there were so many different types.”

  Some Jeeps were much larger than I’d expected, with different features and configurations than I’d noticed in the course of driving around town. Each time I paused to inspect a particular model, I looked at the sticker price. I was unfamiliar with the cost of Jeeps, and most of them were more expensive than I’d hoped they’d be.

  “I do like that one,” I said, pointing to a silver gray Jeep that was a bit smaller than the other designs. It had sleek lines that appealed to me. “What is it?”