The Midnight Show Murders

by Al Roker

  “Billy Blessing,” I said, making it easy for her. “Nice meeting you, Amelia.”

  She turned back to Des. “In the box, Mr. O’Day, you’ll find three additional sets of keys that fit the doors in the villa, and three wireless wands for the front gate. If you need anything more”—she batted her extended eyelashes—“anything, just call. My business card is in the box with the keys.”

  “Lovely,” Des said.

  “I’d be happy to give you a little tour of this marvelous property,” she said.

  “Tell you what, darlin’,” Des said, nodding toward Fitz. “Why don’t you show my associate, Mr. Fitzpatrick, the grounds?” He reached out and grabbed the arm of the seemingly befuddled stewardess. “I’ll be taking my own tour of this young damsel.”

  With that he whisked the young damsel into the villa.

  Trey Halstead introduced himself to Fitz and began edging toward the Prius. “I, ah, better get back to the production company. I’ll call you about tonight, Mr. Fitzpatrick.”

  “Sure,” Fitz said. “Whatever.”

  He then told Amelia St. Laurent that though he was very much up for the tour, he had to supervise the removal of the luggage from the limos. “I’m bettin’ Billy would enjoy the tour,” he added with an evil Irish grin.

  That’s how I discovered that we were on “the sandiest section of the Sands, with a fifty-six-foot frontage.” The main house, the villa, had “beautiful new hardwood floors” and “a gourmet kitchen,” where I would have been happy to spend a little more time. But Amanda St. Laurent, probably thinking about all the prospective house hunters awaiting her back at Crockaby, rushed me to, and past, “the spectacular pool area,” “the lovely, tranquil koi pond,” and “the flowering gardens.”

  At “the attractive detached two-story, two-bedroom guesthouse,” where one of the limo drivers had deposited my luggage, she asked, “Will you be moving to this coast, too, Mr. Blessing?”

  “Doubtful,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m a New Yorker.”

  She gave me a look that is usually accompanied by the words “trailer trash,” then regained control of herself, flashed me her puffy-lipped, ivory-white, bonded-tooth smile, and bid me adieu.

  I spent the next half-hour unpacking and puttering, after which I phoned Harry Paynter, my collaborator on the book, to say hello and settle a time when we might meet. Since I wasn’t sure about the availability of the limousines, I suggested he drive out.

  He clearly did not warm to that idea. “Uh … I guess I can. But I’ll need a couple hours to clear up a few things.”

  I looked at my watch, subtracted the three-hour difference, and told him that I’d expect him around four-thirty his time. Now my time, too.

  With Des and his flight attendant amusing themselves and Fitz off who knows where, I decided to take a stroll along the beach. I got out walking shorts and the T-shirt that read “I’d rather be watching Wake Up, America!” and began bare-footing across the sand past homes that, if sold collectively, would reduce the heart-sickening national debt to a few pennies.

  I’d barely moved beyond Des’s villa when my phone rang. It didn’t actually ring. It played the opening bars of “The Frim-Fram Sauce,” an old bebop tune made famous by Nat King Cole. There aren’t a lot of songs appropriate for a chef-restaurateur’s ringtones. Maybe “Food, Glorious Food,” from the score of Oliver! Or “Gimme a Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer.” Or “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” …

  But I digress.

  The call was from my agent, Wally Wing, finding time for me in his busy day. “Billy, I’m stuck in traffic on my way to Le Bernardin and thought I’d check in, see how the trip went.”

  In other words, “I have nothing else to do, so I may as well rack up some billable minutes.”

  “Trip went fine. Very uneventful.”

  “Hotel accommodation okay?”

  “I canceled the hotel. I’m staying at Des’s place in Malibu.”

  “Wrong move, my brown brother,” he said. “As the great Herman Mankiewicz once said, they don’t even allow brunettes in Malibu.”

  “Herman hasn’t been out here for a while.” In point of fact, the cowriter of Citizen Kane, whom critic Alexander Woollcott once called “the funniest man in New York,” died in the mid-1950s. “Attitudes change in sixty years.”

  “In any case, it’s not smart to bunk in with someone you’re working with. Things go wrong on the job, you take the problems home with you.”

  Wally married one of his assistants. It didn’t last.

  “We’re not bunking,” I said. “I’m in an ‘attractive detached guest-house.’ ”

  “Yeah, but there’s all that sun at the beach. You’re courting melanoma.”

  “The thing that elevates you above all other agents, Wally, is your positive outlook. Don’t forget about the earthquakes, mud slides, and wildfires.”

  “It’s that kind of world, Billy,” he said, and began rambling on about his dinner guest at Le Bernardin. Either a new flame or an old client. I wasn’t sure, because my attention had drifted to a vision limping toward me from the ocean.

  She had to be six feet tall, a sun-bronzed beauty wearing a bright white bikini. Early twenties. Her short black hair was in wet ringlets around a face twisted in pain. “Could you help me?” she begged.

  Chapter

  FIVE

  “Later,” I said to Wally, not bothering to wait for a reply before clicking the phone shut and slipping it into my pocket.

  I walked into the ankle-deep surf, offering my arm.

  “Oh, God, thanks,” she said, shifting some of her weight to my arm and shoulder. “I cut my foot on something out there. Could you walk me to my towel?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  With her hopping to keep her right foot above the sand, we struggled to where she’d laid out a bright orange-and-yellow towel sheet. Beside it was a second towel sheet.

  “If you could just lower me …” she said. “Ahh, yes. Thanks. One more favor? Tell me what you think?”

  She was so physically stunning, it took me a second to realize that she was asking me to gauge the wound.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I knelt down on one knee and lifted her foot by the heel to check the damage. “A little cut on the ball,” I told her. “Maybe an inch long. Doesn’t look very deep. The saltwater is adding to the pain, but it’s doing a little healing, too.”

  “I suppose I should put something on it, just to play safe.”

  “How far is your house?”

  “Over there,” she said, pointing to a two-story traditional enough to have been dragged kicking and screaming from one of Pasadena’s more exclusive zip codes.

  She turned to look over my shoulder at the ocean. “But you’ve been kind enough. I see that help is on the way.”

  I followed her line of sight to where a man was riding the wind on a sailboard. Tall and tanned and fit. He was heading inward, toward us, at surprising speed.

  “He’ll be here in a second,” she said.

  As he sailed nearer, I saw that he was gray-haired and probably a little long in the tooth to be keeping company with a brunette in her twenties. But this was Southern California.

  He rode the board past the shoreline and up onto the sand. He hopped off and began taking in the sail before looking our way. When he did, we recognized each other, and his face broke into a broad grin. “For Christ’s sake!” he shouted. “Billy Blessing. Where the hell did you come from? And don’t tell me you’ve got a camera crew hidden somewhere.”

  “No cameras,” I said. “I’m traveling light.”

  His name was Stew Gentry, and he was one of a diminishing group of legendary movie actors still appearing before the cameras. I wondered if Eastwood or Garner or any of his other remaining contemporaries went in for sailboarding.

  I meet hundreds of celebrities, and most stay in the professional-acquaintance category. But when I spent time with Stew la
st year, interviewing him on Wake Up and for my own show on the Wine & Dine—where he prepared an almost-edible baked Alaska—we established a friendship.

  He gave me a powerful handshake, wet and gritty with ocean salt. “You lied to me,” he said. “You told me you never set foot on this coast.”

  “That was the truth at the time,” I said. “This is a very temporary work visit. But before we get to the details, your … friend needs a little medical attention. She cut her foot.”

  “Shit,” he said. He dropped the sail and his smile, and ran to the brunette. “What happened, baby?”

  “It’s not much of a cut, but I’d like to clean it off, if you could help me up to the house.”

  Stew made his own appraisal of the wound. “Barely a scratch,” he said. “But let’s take care of it.”

  He bent down, cradled all six beautiful feet of her in his arms, and stood. My back almost gave out just watching him. “This lovely, if heavy, young woman isn’t my friend, Billy. She’s my daughter, Dani Kirkendahl. Dani, this is—”

  “Chef Billy Blessing,” she said. “I do watch TV from time to time, Daddy.”

  I’d been momentarily surprised by Stew’s revelation, mainly because I thought he’d told me his daughter had died. Keeping that thought off my face, I said, “Pleased to meet you, Dani.”

  “Come on up to the house, Billy,” Stew said, carrying her across the sand. “I’ll brew up a batch of Manhattans to honor your arrival.”

  I followed them to chez Gentry, stepping gingerly along a path of tree trunk slices laid in sandy gravel. To my left was a swimming pool, as clean and blue-green as one you’d find on a David Hockney canvas; to my right, a redwood deck only slightly smaller than a basketball court housed a glass-top table with a wrought-iron frame, matching chairs, a large umbrella, a gas barbecue, and a half-dozen beach loungers resting side by side.

  I paused at the open French doors to brush the sand off my feet, then entered what could have passed as a set from one of Stew’s Western films—the wealthy cattle baron’s comfortable living room, complete with thick dark-wood ceiling beams and heavy planked hardwood floors covered by handcrafted Indian rugs in subdued earth colors.

  The room, the house, was a beehive of activity. A cleaning crew of supple young women, mainly Latina, was vacuuming, dusting, and applying some kind of liquid wax or cleanser to a chocolate leather sofa and chairs that faced a huge white stone hearth. One of the workers was using a dustpan to capture the ashes from last night’s fire.

  Stew was halfway up the curving stairwell, Dani still in his arms. “Be just a minute, Billy,” he called down. “Don’t flirt with the ladies. They’ve got work to do. Make yourself comfortable.”

  I took that as a license to snoop.

  Staying clear of the ladies, I strolled around the room. The walls were filled with what I assumed were mementos from hunting forays. No buffalo or moose heads, but mounted antlers, a mounted snake at least seven feet long that was being carefully avoided by a lady with a dust rag, and the pelt of what must have been a good-sized mountain lion. There were oil paintings of Western scenes in ornate gold frames, and a tall, spotless glass case displaying an assortment of handguns and rifles.

  In a corner of the room was a round, scarred wooden table covered in green felt, on which was displayed a collection of framed photos. Some were movie oriented—Stew on location, goofing with the crew, riding a horse, embracing a leading lady. Some were portraits of celebrities with inscribed messages of friendship. There were several daguerreotypes—his parents or grandparents? There were shots of Stew, in the late 1960s maybe, aboard a yacht with a handsome blonde—a former wife?—and others in what appeared to be a foreign locale with a lovely brunette and a little girl, probably Dani. There were pictures of a beautiful young bride, definitely Dani, in a wedding gown, with Stew at her side, wearing a morning suit and looking dashing if slightly in the bag.

  I paused in my photo perusal, distracted by the aroma of something intriguingly spicy that had drifted into the room, when one of the staff entered through a kitchen door. I headed that way and pushed open the door to face several women in white aprons and caps preparing a Mexican feast.

  One of them was creating a seafood salad, tossing peeled shrimp and hunks of crabmeat into a bowl so gigantic that Stew was either having a very large crowd for dinner or was opening his own restaurant.

  It had been nearly thirteen hours since I’d had breakfast in Manhattan. I’d passed on the first-class lunch fare, maintaining my belief that if God had wanted flying creatures to eat while in the air, he would not have given the pelican that deep pouch to hold its food in for later. And he’d have definitely done something about the food prep on planes.

  Thirteen hours of abstinence and the food aromas were causing my brain to short-circuit. Before I did something totally uncivilized, I backed out of the kitchen and escaped to a study just off the other side of the main room.

  It had the rumpled, lived-in look of a special place. There was an Eames lounge-chair-and-ottoman combo (which I’ve always wanted but could never figure out why), and beside it a floor lamp and a Mission-style end table on which rested a highball glass with about a half-inch of melted ice, a folded newspaper, several scripts, and a copy of the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s autobiography. If that didn’t suggest that Stew was more of a reader than his rough-hewn image indicated, one wall was lined with hardcover books, mainly biographies and historical tomes.

  There was also a dish containing very stale cashews that I scarfed gratefully while studying the art hanging on the walls. It was as modern as the living room art was trad. Some were by painters whose style was unfamiliar—an expressionist work that seemed to suggest water breaking against rocks, a black-and-white portrait of a bird emerging from its shell, and a jumbled streetscape. But there was also a bright, riveting de Kooning woman and one of Mark Rothko’s very valuable color swatches.

  I was so caught up in the de Kooning that I didn’t hear Stew enter the room and jumped a foot when he announced, “Cocktail time.”

  He had a glass pitcher of brown liquid in one hand and two long-stemmed glasses in the other. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

  “Nothing a trip to the cardiologist won’t cure,” I said, taking one of the glasses from him. “How’s Dani doing?”

  “Fine. It’s nothing. She’ll be down in a minute. Meanwhile …” He filled my glass. “Let the trendsetting assholes slurp their bubblegum cocktails,” he said. “I’ll stick to the classics.”

  I took the cocktail to a soft leather couch that faced the Eames chair, where Stew sat before filling his own glass. He raised it and said, “To your arrival on the best coast.”

  I sipped the cocktail. It was about as good a Manhattan as one could blend in a pitcher.

  “So, Billy, what kind of work brings you out here against your will?” he asked.

  “The network is launching a new late-night show.”

  “Like Leno’s?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There’s been some publicity. Not enough, apparently.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “I’m no judge. Except for sports, I don’t pay any attention to what they’re doing on TV. But this show must be something special to lure you out here. And living in Malibu Sands? Which place, by the way?”

  “Villa Delfina.”

  He was silent for a beat, then said, “The villa, huh? I heard the asking price was twenty-six mil.”

  “Well, because of the recession, I got them to come down a few thou,” I said.

  When he didn’t smile, I added, “I’m just a guest of the owner’s, a chimney sweep in this sunny hall of kings.”

  “Who’s payin’ the freight?”

  “The guy who’s hosting the new show, a comedian named Desmond O’Day.”

  Stew cocked his head and frowned.

  “You know Des?” I asked.

  “Not that I recall,” he said. “Comedian, huh? One of those alw
ays-on guys?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But I’ve only just met him. We flew in earlier today, and he very kindly offered me the comfort of his guesthouse.”

  “I’ll have to thank him for bringing you to the neighborhood.”

  There was a thumping noise coming from the other room. It grew louder until Dani appeared at the door, looking beautiful and healthy in an aqua tank top, white slacks, and sandals.

  Stew’s smile of fatherly pride left his face when he saw that she was carrying a blackthorn walking stick. “Where the hell did you find that goddamned thing?” he growled.

  “In your room,” she said, surprised at his sudden anger. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t I have—”

  “No, no. It’s fine. Come and sit.”

  “Better not,” she said. “There’re only a few hours before the guests will be arriving. I might just take a little nap.” She graced me with a smile. “It was lovely meeting you, Billy.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine,” I said, rising. I placed my barely touched Manhattan on a table and added, “I’d better be going, too. Work beckons.”

  Stew walked with us into the living room. While Dani hobbled toward the stairs, he saw me out the way I’d come in. “As you may have gathered, we’re having a little dinner party here tonight,” he said. “Mixing business and pleasure. There’ll be some folks who are investing in my next screen masterpiece, some friends, and even some enemies. But a convivial crowd in the main. Please drop by.”

  I hesitated, mainly because I was weak from hunger and just a little jet-lagged.

  “I really would love for you to come, Billy. We’ll have lots of food, lots of booze, a few lovely ladies. And you won’t even have to worry about driving home.”

  “You didn’t cook any of the food, did you? I still have nightmares I blame on the baked Alaska you whipped up on my show.”

  He chuckled. “That really wasn’t my specialty,” he said. “The publicity people thought it would make a good visual. Actually, I’m a damn fine chef, and I hope I get the chance to prove it to you while you’re here. But tonight’s feast is being prepared by professionals such as yourself.”