Muffin to Fear, page 26
Hugh looked startled, and the camera joggled as Arnie jumped slightly. I heard a gasp from someone who then whispered, “What is she doing?” I knew what I was doing. I was outing a killer.
Felice stuttered, “W-what are you . . . I m-mean, what do you . . . ?” She gave up without finishing.
Pish said, “She means we’ve figured out which of the Haunt Hunt cast or crew killed both Dirk Phillipe and Todd Halsey.”
“B-but Todd committed suicide,” Felice said. The expression in her eyes was pure panic.
“He’d never do that!” Rishelle cried out.
“Why, Rishelle?” I asked, turning to look toward Todd’s widow, off camera.
“Because he was raised Catholic! He’d never think of actually doing such a thing.”
“Rishelle, just after you found him, you yourself thought he committed suicide,” I said. “You’re the one who said it first.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” she sobbed. “He said a lot of stuff when he was depressed, like, he thought everyone would be better off without him around, and that he wasn’t good enough for me, and that he was tired of living.”
It showed that the public face and private face of someone often did not agree.
“And he had found out something that upset him.” She looked at Arnie. “It upset him a lot.” She took in a deep shaky breath and looked over at Stu. “And then he suspected you were planning on jumping ship, Stu. He knew you had another show lined up. But still, in my heart of hearts, I know he’d never have killed himself. We talked about it once when I was worried. When he got depressed he’d say things, but he told me then that he’d never actually do it because from his Catholic upbringing in the church he believed suicide was a mortal sin.”
“Rishelle, what about the gun?” I asked. “Was it his or not?”
“It was not!”
“Who did it belong to?”
“I bought it, but not for myself,” Stu said. “Rishelle, it was Todd’s, like I told the cops. He’s the one who wanted it. He was paranoid ever since Dirk had that weird accident last month while we were investigating in Kalamazoo.”
Kalamazoo? Weird accident? Some of the cast were exchanging looks, and I remembered Millicent, Felice, and Serina exchanging similar looks in the bedroom and my sense that there was something they were not saying.
“What happened in Kalamazoo?” Pish asked.
“It wasn’t in Kalamazoo,” Hugh spoke up. “It was near Kalamazoo . . . a haunted cottage on a small lake nearby that the crew was investigating.”
“It was three weeks ago. Someone took a potshot from the woods,” Stu said. “It tore Todd’s jacket. He made a huge fuss over it at first,” he went on. “That’s when he had me get him the gun. He wanted to protect himself and Rishelle if it came down to it. He thought some stalker was on the loose. Trust me, we get some weird threats online. But then for some reason he let it go.”
“That’s because he thought he knew what happened,” Millicent said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, turning to watch the psychic.
“Todd was never the target of the gunshot; Dirk was.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. This was all falling into place, and it meant I was not only right, but there would potentially be more evidence than I had even hoped.
“I heard them talking about it. Dirk said it was a shot at him, not Todd, and that he’d take care of it.”
This was definitely what the women had been not talking about, this gunshot in the woods.
“When did Todd and Dirk talk about this?” Pish asked.
“Last week after the paranormal conference in Albany,” Millicent said. “That’s what the big fuss between them was about, why they got into a fistfight. Todd thought Dirk was dramatizing himself again, but later they talked it through. I think Dirk finally convinced him.”
“It was shortly after that that your schedule changed, and you came here instead of where you were supposed to go,” I said. “Is that right, Hugh?”
“I suppose. I knew about the gunshot, but I understood it was a wild shot by some hunter.” He turned his attention to the psychic. “Millie, why didn’t you tell me you were frightened?”
“You told us not to talk about it to outsiders, that you didn’t want it getting out to the media,” Millicent said.
Hugh tossed his notebook aside and looked back to me. “Where are we going with this, Merry? Pish? I’ll not have my cast and crew misused.”
I ignored him and instead watched the psychic. “So, Dirk was shot at, but said he knew what was going on and told everyone to drop it.”
“Not everyone,” Millicent said. “Just me. Everyone else had already let it go. They figured it was like Hugh said, some random gunshot in the woods from a hunter.”
“Stu, did you know that isn’t legal? To buy a gun for someone who wasn’t legally allowed to have one?” Virgil said.
Stu shrank down in a club chair. I gave my husband a look and he rolled his eyes. Once a cop, always a cop.
“You had to know it was illegal, Stu,” Hugh said. “Everyone knows that you can’t buy a gun for someone not legally allowed to have one. It’s like buying alcohol for a minor.”
But Stu shook his head again.
“So the shot actually hit Todd?” I wanted to be clear.
“It didn’t exactly hit Todd; I mean, it tore his jacket sleeve,” Stu said. “I swear, I didn’t mean any harm buying the gun, but Todd was my friend, and he was legit scared. Any of you would do the same thing!”
“Uh, no, we wouldn’t,” Felice said. “I wouldn’t buy a gun for anyone! I hate the damn things.”
The producer turned his attention back to Pish and me. “You still haven’t told me what’s going on here,” Hugh said, standing and setting his notebook aside. “This is enough. We’re stopping right now.”
I stood, too, and looked at the producer. “Dirk spent some time in Autumn Vale the day after you all arrived and the next morning. He used a computer to look something up while you were all busy interviewing the librarian.” I was about to fudge a wee bit, but I thought I was safe, given what I had found written on the piece of paper on the library table, in what I knew was Dirk’s handwriting from the autograph he had given Mabel Thorpe. All of his scribbling, especially “Art. 400,” short for Article 400, in this particular instance, related to one thing. “He was looking up your name.”
Hugh looked puzzled. “My name? Concerning what?”
“A gun ownership permit.” Article 400 of New York State Penal Law concerns gun ownership in the state.
He was silent.
“There’s a list out there of everyone in New York who has a gun permit. The list was released online after someone got a hold of it using the Freedom of Information Act, and you’re on it.” The power of information!
“It is a legally owned handgun for my own protection,” Hugh said, his tone tight with anger. “Can’t an American own a gun anymore? It’s my Second Amendment right.”
“But it’s not something you’ve shared with anyone, is it? And Dirk thought perhaps you were behind the random shot that caught Todd’s jacket sleeve, since he was right there next to Todd but stepped away in the nick of time. Hugh, I may as well tell you now, we know what happened the night of Dirk’s murder.”
There was a wild jumble of voices, but I kept my focus on the producer. “Why don’t you tell your cast how much you loathe this show? How you’ve been trying for two years to find another job, but that more and more in the industry you were becoming a pariah, in part because of your job with Haunt Hunt, but more particularly because of your past poor track record and your behavior on location.”
“That’s ridiculous!” he said. “A job is a job. No one in the industry takes this stuff seriously.”
“That’s somewhat true,” I said. “It wouldn’t matter in a lot of cases. If you were a stellar producer who took a job and made a success out of a silly ghost hunting show it would be no big deal. But your trouble goes back further. Your decisions and background on five past network shows were pinpointed as the reason they failed, even ones that had every potential of succeeding. You were becoming a liability. You only got this job with HHN because of connections with the network boss.”
Stiffly, he said, “I don’t know where you’re going with this.”
“I’m just saying . . . you don’t have a great track record when it comes to making decisions, even though you talk a good game. You certainly had me fooled. I truly thought you were some kind of superstar in the industry. That’s why I was so puzzled about why you were producing Haunt Hunt.” I looked around at the cast and crew. “No offense, folks.”
All eyes were on us, and no one moved a muscle. No one even blinked.
“You don’t know a single thing you’re talking about,” Hugh said.
I ignored him. “Funny that with this show, the one you desperately wanted to fail so you could move on to a show you thought more befitting the image you’ve built up in your head of yourself, with your Savile Row bespoke suits and Berluti shoes, you finally succeeded.” Sometimes, the best way to succeed was to stop trying so hard.
“In true form for you,” I continued. “When you make decisions to improve a show, you fail, so when you make choices to try to sabotage a show, like bringing in psychics and encouraging them to act up, it only served to make it enormously popular.” I turned to Millicent. “You were right, Millie; he was trying to sabotage the show. Thank you for that early insight.”
“You’ll never get that wining and dining travelogue show, Hugh,” Pish interjected.
“It was all about the psychics, Hugh, right? The psychics. You were impatient, waiting for Haunt Hunt to be canceled, so you hired two wacky psychics. You thought viewers would ridicule them and the ratings would nosedive, but instead they skyrocketed. You were finally succeeding right where you did not want to succeed. The very few people you respect in the industry were starting to treat you not just as a failure, which you were used to despite your bragging, but as a joke.”
His face was turning red, his nose looking like a Rudolph beacon. His fluffy eyebrows were drawn so low over his eyes they looked like they were buried in a nest. Despite that, he remained relatively impassive. He needed more prodding.
“You were becoming desperate to get out of the mess you were in so you could move on to something you actually wanted to do,” I said.
“We’re done here.” He snatched up his notebook and whirled to leave.
But Stu stood and stepped in his path. “Hugh, what’s this about? Don’t leave; defend yourself, man!”
“He can’t,” Pish said, raising his voice over the whispers that were beginning to ripple through the room. “Merry is right. Hugh has been trying desperately to ditch this job for two years. When Haunt Hunt became moderately popular in its first year because of you and Todd, he thought that bringing on psychics would be the way to kill it for serious fans of paranormal investigation. I’m sure he told you and Todd that you had no choice in the matter, or some such mumbo jumbo. Dirk Phillipe was brought on board to destroy the show. So was Millicent. He encouraged every quirk they had, every silly impulse. Ratings were supposed to go down, not up. But they did go up, way up. Dirk Philippe was enormously popular, and he knew it. It was two narcissists colliding. Hugh tried to destroy Haunt Hunt and ended up making it more popular.”
“That can’t be true.” Millicent, trembling, reached out and grabbed Rishelle’s hand.
Felice, her face reddening, bolted to her feet and said, “Now it makes sense! I could not figure out why Hugh said one thing and did another.”
“What do you mean, Felice?” Stu asked.
“He kept saying he wanted us to be a serious ghost hunting show, but then he didn’t stop Dirk’s antics. You guys know what I’m talking about,” she said, her gaze sweeping the others. “Stu, you, me, and Todd went to him and begged him . . . we tried to get him to get rid of the psychics, but he wouldn’t. Said it was the psychics or the show would be canceled.”
“They were the most popular things about the show, you idiots,” Hugh said. “You were on a hit, and I’m to blame? This woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he said, angrily waving his hand at me. “Do you honestly think I’d kill the goose that laid the golden egg?”
Interesting choice of words, I thought. Pandemonium broke out, recriminations were hurled, and Millicent, the only living psychic on the show, wept and collapsed in a heap on the couch, wailing that they all hated her.
“So, what are you saying, Merry?” Arnie asked, since there was no one else to do it. “What is this all about?”
“This is about who killed Dirk Philippe and Todd Halsey.” My words cut through the noise and silence fell. Everyone watched me.
Rishelle spoke first. “Who killed my husband? Do you know? Because he did not kill himself. I know what I said that night he died, but I was distraught. Since then I’ve been trying to tell everyone he wouldn’t do it, including that dork of a sheriff.”
Virgil snorted faintly in the background, but we all ignored him.
“Merry, Pish, if you have something serious to say, then say it,” Hugh said. “Otherwise, stop right now. I won’t have my cast and crew—and myself—subjected to your amateur guesswork and grandstanding. It’s all innuendo and insinuation. I told Todd when he wanted to come here that I didn’t like the idea that you had these murders here before.”
Aha! Bunch of stuff there. I looked at him and smiled. “That’s funny, Hugh. You’ve been messing up on that. Sometimes you say you didn’t know about the murders, and sometimes you say you did know about them and so didn’t want to come here. You can’t have it both ways.” It was true; liars usually do trip themselves up at some point. “You’ve been saying all along that Todd is the one who wanted to come here, and I was told that he had even lied to cancel the place where you were supposed to go this weekend.”
Stu nodded. “I know for sure it was Todd who wanted to do this.”
“That’s because Hugh is a great manipulator, Stu. He made Todd think it was all his idea. But in truth, it was all Hugh.” I turned back to the producer. “Wasn’t it? You’re the one who canceled the other shoot, calling them as Todd. And then you told Todd the homeowners had postponed, and ‘encouraged’ Todd to choose Wynter Castle,” I said, sketching the air quotes. “Todd did what Todd always did, took credit for ideas even when they weren’t his own. And you did it because of the murders in our past, not in spite of them. Just another example of Murder Castle working its magic.” My tone was dripping with bitterness, which I felt down to my soul.
But Hugh was silent. And that wasn’t good.
“Hugh, say something!” Stu cried.
“Stu, shut up! This woman has nothing. She’s grasping at straws, fancies herself as an investigator.”
Pish faced the producer. “So, if that’s true, who do you think, among your cast or crew, killed Dirk?”
Calming and taking a deep breath, Hugh said, “We know who did it.” He turned to Rishelle. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but your husband did it; Todd killed Dirk. He found out about your little prank and went out and altered it to be deadly. He got the idea because of that accidental shot in Michigan, which really was just a stray bullet, despite their wild imaginings. Todd was out of control with jealousy over Dirk’s popularity. You remember his behavior at the last paranormal conference. He sulked like a little girl and then he and Dirk had that raging argument.”
“He did not kill Dirk! Why are you saying that, Hugh?” Rishelle was trembling, and tears started in her eyes. Despite having an affair, she did love her husband. The fling with Arnie was her effort to retaliate against his ongoing affair with Serina; Todd’s affair with Serina was his attempt to self-medicate away his depression.
“So, Hugh, was it you who guided the Ouija planchette to Todd’s name to put the accusation out there?” I said.
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Someone did it. Todd was overheard, you know, the night he died,” I continued. “Sitting in the van, talking on the phone . . . he was overheard threatening someone with exposure. Who do you think he was talking to?”
“You seem to know so much,” the producer said. “Why don’t you tell me?”
I had thought that Hugh, who was a classic narcissist, would crack and brag, but instead he was so disciplined he was giving me nothing. “Well, I can tell you whose phone it was.”
Hugh was silent, watching me.
“Wait,” Stu said, bolting up, his hands going to his jacket pocket automatically. “Is that where my phone went? I haven’t been able to find it since last night. Did someone steal it and use it to talk to Todd?” He turned and eyed everyone, but his gaze settled on Hugh.
I could almost see the penny drop. There was silence for a long minute; everyone seemed stunned, holding their breath.
“You,” Stu said, glaring at Hugh. “You stole my phone and used it to talk to Todd so the phone call wouldn’t be traced back to you.”
Hugh sighed with exaggerated weariness. “Stu, anyone could have stolen your phone. You’re continually laying it around everywhere.”
“But not everyone was downstairs on the night Dirk died,” I said. “I thought you were coming down when I met you on the stairs, but you pulled a classic trick.” I glanced at Lizzie. “If you’re trying to sneak in and are almost to the top but get caught, turn around and folks will think you’re heading down, right?” He had been in bare feet; there was a reason for that. I would have wondered what was up if he had on his heavy housecoat and his expensive Berluti shoes. He was the kind of guy who would have Giuseppe Zanotti slippers. “And not everyone was trying to hide that they were really the one who canceled the shoot scheduled for this weekend in favor of a place where multiple murders had occurred.”
