The Talk Show Murders (2 page)

“Had the body been in the lake that long?” Gemma inquired.

“The water and the fishies did some damage, to be sure,” Patton said. “But that’s not the real problem.”

I noticed a tiny crease appear above Gemma’s right eyebrow. Love that high-def quality. She seemed to be getting a little peeved at the way Patton was drawing it out. “And the
real
problem
is
…?” she demanded.

Grinning, the ex-cop ran a thick finger across his neck. “The corpse’s head had been chopped off clean. And they can’t find it anywhere.”

Enjoy your lunch, kids.

Gemma blinked.

I’d written off as nonsense her comment about not knowing what Patton was going to say. Even if Standards and Practices didn’t have their own often too-rigid rules of dos and don’ts, talk show hosts are usually control freaks, at least professionally. But from where I was sitting, it looked like genuine surprise on her elaborately pancaked face.

She waited for the gasps from the audience to subside and asked, “You’re
say
ing someone de
cap
itated the victim?”

“He sure as heck didn’t do it himself,” Patton said. “His hands and feet were chopped off, too.”

“OhmyGod!” Carrie Sands exclaimed. “Then it had to be murder.”

The view switched from a two-shot of Patton and Gemma to an angle that included the actress.

“The missing hands do kinda rule out suicide, babe,” Patton said. “But like the old joke says, they could always use what was left for third base.”

“That’s disgusting,” Carrie said.

Patton shrugged. “All in the eye of the beholder. I know people who say pole dancing is disgusting. Personally, I’m a fan.”

Carrie glared at the grinning man.

“If you can get your
mind
off of
pole
dancing for a few more minutes, Pat,” Gemma said, “is there anything else you can tell us about the mys
ter
ious body?”

The camera moved in on Patton.

“Sure,” he said. “The vic was Caucasian. Male. That much is still in evidence. Wherever the head is, it’s got brown hair. In his forties, they think. No DNA match so far. The feeling at Homicide is that he’s somebody whose identity would point the way to the killer or killers.”

The camera closed in on Patton and Gemma, catching a glint in her green eyes. “And they have no idea who the poor soul might be?”

Patton lowered his head and tried another Gene Hackman grin. “They don’t.”

“But you do?”

He shrugged. “Let’s just say I’ve got a hunch. If it pans out, you and your audience will be the first to hear, Gemma.”

“Does your
hunch
have anything to do with the work you were doing before your retirement? Back when you were on the Organized Crime Task Force?”

He smiled. “Good try, Gemma. But no. Those Outfit guys usually didn’t bother cuttin’ off parts of the body if they were using the vic for fish food. When they put somebody in the drink, they stayed in the drink.”

“W-whoever did this didn’t try to keep the … d-dead man submerged?” Carrie Sands asked, catching the camera operator off guard. By the time he found her, Patton was answering the question.

“They tried. The theory is the body had been anchored by a heavy weight but broke loose when the fish came to dinner. Judging by the teeth marks, they say it mighta been a bull shark did most of the dining. I been living in Chi my whole life and I never knew there were bull shark in Lake Michigan.”

Gemma Bright must have realized the idea of a shark nibbling on
the corpse was one nightmare image too many for her lunchtime audience. “Yes. Well.
Nasty
business,
indeed
.”

She turned to the camera and said, “A real-life murder mystery, and we’ll be bringing you the events as they
unfold
. Now, coming up is a
charming
man—you all know him from
Wake Up, America
!, seen every
weekday
morning from seven to nine right here on WWBC Chicago, and on his own cooking show on the Wine and Dine cable network, Chef
Billy Blessing
.

“But first …”

As the show cut to a commercial, I stood, fully aware of Kiki’s gimlet eye. She was on the verge of saying something, but Larry Kelsto interrupted her.

“Only fourteen minutes left,” he whined. “I’m getting that bumped feeling. I knew it as soon as Patton showed up, the asshole.”

I took a few deep breaths and tried to relax. A young woman appeared at the door, wearing denims, a white WBC T-shirt, a barbed-wire tattoo on her left wrist, and a headset. Whispering into the headset, she approached and quickly and efficiently checked a tiny wireless microphone before hiding it behind my tie.

“This way, Chef Blessing,” she said.

“Lose the goofy grin, Billy,” Kiki advised. “It’s inappropriate with all the talk about a headless dead body.”

As I followed my guide along the darkened backstage area, I heard Gemma announcing, “Here he is, one of your favorites and my
very
good friend, superchef
Billy Blessing
.”

A stagehand pulled back a flap in the dark curtain, and I stepped into bright lights and a response that sounded, to my ears, at least, a little more enthusiastic than the blinking
APPLAUSE
signs usually produced.

The other two guests shifted on the couch as I took our hostess’s hand and kissed it. I can be debonair when I want to. I gave the still-applauding audience a friendly wave and took my place on the end of the couch.

Gemma smelled of magnolias. Patton smelled of a spicy aftershave and, unless I missed my guess, a mid-morning gin.

“Billy, it’s
wonderful
to have you here again,” our hostess said. “It’s been
much
too long since your last visit.”

“About three years,” I said. “Definitely too long. This is a great city.”

Gemma faced the camera. “This is the busiest man I know. In addition to his so
very
entertaining television work, he has a
mar
velous restaurant in Manhattan. He writes cookbooks and—”

“He was mixed up in some murders on the West Coast,” Patton said.

A shadow of annoyance flitted over Gemma’s face. She wasn’t used to being upstaged, especially by a guest who’d already moved to the less-active middle of the couch. “How right you are, Pat,” she said.

She leaned closer to me and, using a softer, more intimate voice, said, “You went through
quite
an ordeal in Southern Cali
for
nia last year, Billy. And before that, you helped the police with a series of murders in New York
City
, as we know from the fascinatingly suspenseful
book
you wrote. What was it called?”

“
Wake Up to Murder,
” I said. “It’s available in trade paperback.”

“You’re becoming a regular
super
sleuth, like … Monk.”

I myself would have opted for Alex Cross or Easy Rawlins. Or even Guy Hanks.

“The police did most of the work,” I said.

“Well, I’m
sure
you contri—”

“You were right in the middle of the West Coast murders.” This time, it was Carrie Sands, speaking up from the never-to-be heard-from far end of the couch. “I just read poor Stew Gentry’s book and he says you did all the detective work.”

“Ah, yes,” Gemma said coolly. “
That
book. We had the young man on the show who helped poor,
sad
Stew write the book. Harry something …”

“Harry Paynter,” I said. There’d been a time when Harry was supposed to have helped me with my book, but he’d declined, in favor of
Fade-out: The Stew Gentry Story
. Just as well. Harry was a little too much of a hack for my taste.

“His and Stew’s book garnished un
an
imous critical raves,” Gemma said. “And it’s at the
top
of the bestseller lists.”

“In second place, actually,” Carrie said. “Gerard’s latest,
The Thief Who Stole Big Ben
, is number one.”

The French novelist Gerard Parnelle had begun a series of thrillers about a scruffy Marseilles orphan who, through several improbable encounters, had been transformed into a beautiful, remarkably resourceful master thief. Book one,
The Thief Who Stole the Eiffel Tower
, had been the basis for a motion picture so successful in Europe and Asia it had heralded a Newer Wave for the French film industry. The movie Carrie was making in Chicago was an American version,
The Thief Who Stole Trump Tower
. If they wanted to steal something really big, they could’ve ripped off Trump’s ego.

The recently published sequel,
Big Ben
, had arrived at the tipping point of the series’s international popularity.

“Gerard’s book is
numero uno
, of course,” Gemma said. “And, Carrie, I want you to remind that
bad
boy that he owes me a visit.”

“He’s in Paris, Gemma,” the actress said. “He flew there weeks ago.”

“Well, he’ll just
have
to fly back,” Gemma said before turning to me and, without batting an eye, asking, “Do you ag
ree
with what Stew had to say about you in
his
book, Billy?”

“I … I haven’t read it.”

That was a lie, but from what I’ve observed, lies don’t count on TV talk shows any more than they do in politics.

“Sandy Selman’s making a movie based on Stew’s story,” Carrie announced. She was apparently the source of all that was literary in Hollywood.

“Really? Will you be
in
it, Billy?”

“Doubtful,” I told her. Hoping to close down the topic and move on to the reason the network’s public relations team had arranged for me to be on the show, I added, “That whole thing is pretty much old news.”

“Still, it’s exciting to hear about it
firsthand
. As I recall, it was only
by the
merest
stroke of good fortune you weren’t killed. I’m sure our audience would love to hear what that was
like
.”

Sighing, I dutifully obliged with a brief wrap-up of my brushes with death, being careful not to say anything that was not part of the public record. Having returned to Los Angeles for the trial, I’d had my fill of courtroom command performances.

“Do you think the punishment
fit
the crime?” Gemma asked.

“Happily, that was not my call,” I said.

“What the hell does it take for those touchy-feely idiots in La-La land to put killers away?” Pat Patton exploded.

“They didn’t go free,” I said.

“No. But they could be out in eight. And then they might come looking for the guy who helped put ’em away. Something to think about, huh, Billy boy?”

He was actually grinning. “Anything to make you happy, Pat,” I replied.

Then, assuming that even a lame segue is better than none at all, I said, “Speaking of ‘looking’ for something, Gemma, I hope your audience will be looking in on Monday when
Wake Up, America
! begins the first of two weeks’ telecasting right here from Chicago. We’ll be reminding the rest of the country about what a great city this is.”

Thankfully, Gemma hopped right on board and we went back and forth on the glories of the Second City for a while.

I’m usually relaxed even in this kind of environment, but I was thrown off a little by the sight of Patton in my peripheral vision. He kept staring at me—not in fascination or awe or even professional courtesy but with narrowed eyes, as if I were an irritant that was causing him some internal distress.

I tried shifting on the couch until he was out of my line of sight, but that left me at an awkward angle. Which was making Gemma nervous.

During the commercial break, I turned to Patton and said, “So how do you like me so far?”

He continued to glare, ignoring my question. Then, lowering his voice, he said, “We’ve met before, right?”

“Not that I recall. But I’m on TV every morning. Sometimes people—”

“I’ve seen you on TV. Not so much on your show. I listen to the radio in the morning. It was on the news coverage of those murders. But I’ve got a crappy little screen. Eyeballin’ you up close and personal, I’m pretty sure we met way back, Billy, when you had a lot more hair and less pounds. Yeah. Only the name wasn’t Blessing. Billy … something else.”

“We’ve never met,” I said, wondering if that was true. Hoping that it was.

“We’re chatting with one of our
fav
orites, Chef Billy Blessing,” Gemma said, signaling to us that we were back on camera. “He and the rest of the
Wake Up, America
! team will be greeting you
live
from Chicago for the next two weeks over WWBC.”

She turned toward me. “Will all the cohosts be here, Billy?”

I’m sure I answered the question and that I continued to keep up my end of the conversation, but my thoughts were definitely elsewhere.

I heard Gemma announce tomorrow’s guests and apologize to Larry Kelsto for bumping him once again. She then informed the studio audience that each and every one of them was getting a complete makeover, courtesy of several local entrepreneurs. With the squeals of their delight almost drowning out her goodbyes,
Midday with Gemma
drew to a close.

As was the custom, while the credits rolled, Gemma, Carrie Sands, Patton, and I all stood and pretended to be chatting among ourselves as if we were old pals. Actually, Carrie was saying she’d be seeing me on Tuesday’s
Wake Up
. We were giving her movie a big push because we’d made a first-look deal with its writer, Gerard Parnelle, for a TV series idea he was putting together.

Patton was not playing our game exactly. He remained silent, staring at me, sly smile in place.

Given the all clear, I headed for the greenroom and Kiki, but
Patton blocked my way. “Billy Blanchard. That’s your real name, right?”

The sight of his smile had taken the surprise out of it. I stared at him, unblinking and unemotional. “My real name is Billy Blessing,” I said, walking around him.

“Now, maybe,” he said, keeping pace. “But back at the tail end of the eighties, pal, you and I both know it was Blanchard. And you claimed a body that turned up in Cicero. I’ll have the stiff’s name in a second.”