Farris shook his head miserably-maybe he wouldn't have looked so miserable if he'd taken off his Stetson- and reached inside his leather vest. 'Here.'
Tobin tapped the notebook dramatically, the way a prosecuting attorney who'd trained at Warner Brothers would have.
'In this notebook,' he said and thumped it again, rather enjoying himself now. 'In this notebook is evidence that will convict one of you of Ken Norris's death-and the deaths of Iris Graves and Everett Sanderson.'
'If you've got the evidence,' said Todd Ames, smiling with capped teeth at Cassie, 'then why don't you make a formal accusation?'
'Because as yet I haven't broken the code.'
'Code?' Ames said.
'She wrote in her own shorthand. Not even her boss at Snoop can translate it.'
He felt a genuine sense of relief pass through the five people packed into his tiny cabin.
He took to pacing again. He took to notebook-thumping again. He said, 'You know what I think?'
Kevin Anderson said, 'I don't know what you think but I also don't give a damn what you think.'
'I think,' said Tobin, undeterred, 'that one of you killed him and that the rest of you are protecting that person.' He thumped again. 'But here's the trick. I also suspect that you're not sure which of you did it. You'-and he pointed to Cassie-'you may think it's Kevin and Kevin may think it's Todd and Todd may think-'
Todd Ames said, 'You don't have a damn thing on any of us. You've got some queer notebook with some scrawlings in it, and that's all.'
Jere Farris said, 'And we've still got the show.'
Tobin saw it then. Mention of the show made each of them smile. He saw how 'Celebrity Circle' bound them up tight as blood. He said, 'And that's why you're afraid that one of you is a killer. Because if that's the case, the show may well die. And your livelihoods will be all over.' He turned to Farris. 'What did you say about directing local TV news?'
Kevin Anderson threw back the last of the Wild Turkey and said, 'I don't know about anybody else, but I'm leaving.'
'Me too,' Cassie said.
'One of you is a killer,' Tobin said.
'You wave that goddamn notebook at us one more time,' Anderson said, 'and I'll put it someplace you won't like at all.'
His anger served as a rallying point for the rest of them. Soon Tarzan was joined by a cowboy, a hooker, Robin Hood, and Florence Nightingale at the door.
'We're going back to the party,' Jere Farris said, 'and have a damn good time. You coming, Tobin?'
With that, they all laughed and left, slamming the door with undue finality.
The first thing Tobin did was go to the bathroom again.
Then he came out and lit up a cigarillo and took to pacing once more. His plan hadn't worked. He hadn't learned a damn thing.
Or so he thought until he began looking carefully at the jumble of personal effects on the bed.
Something was missing. He wasn't sure what. He just had the impression that not all the stuff Captain Hackett had given him was there now.
It took him ten minutes of sifting and ten minutes of trying to remember everything that Hackett had handed over before he realized what was gone.
Sanderson's newspaper clippings about the fire and the Indiana beauty contest. What bearing did they have on 'Celebrity Circle'? And whose identity would they have exposed? Strange. Damn strange.
31
'Say, would you dance with me so my husband could take a picture of us?'
The woman, bigger than Tobin-which was not, after all, an especially impressive feat-had grabbed him just inside the restaurant where he'd gone in search of Cindy.
The woman was dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West and her husband as Teddy Roosevelt. The husband, drunk, tried aiming a Polaroid at Tobin. Everything here was, if anything, crazier than when Tobin had left. Two fat men did something like a polka with each other while their wives laughed so hard they pounded each other on the shoulder. The two fat men were up on a table. A waiter, in a snit, and probably a well-deserved snit, took a drunk's drink and poured it into a flower bowl, apparently telling the man he'd been cut off. The dance floor was darker now; only a feeble dawnlike hue of pink from a baby spotlight offered any illumination, and some of the scenes on the dance floor were reasonably pornographic, the frivolity of earlier hours having given way to pure-and understandable-lust.
'I've danced with everybody on 'Celebrity Circle,' ' the woman said. 'And Henry's taken my picture with every one. You're the last.'
'Goody,' Tobin said, letting her pull him onto the floor and into his arms as the trio played 'The Impossible Dream' as a samba. 'Smile,' Henry said.
'I always liked you better than your partner on that review show,' the woman said. 'He was too snotty. He didn't like Robert Redford.'
'Neither do I,' Tobin said.
The woman, fiftyish, giggled. 'Yes, but you're cute.'
He supposed there was logic there somewhere.
As they danced, and Henry continued to punch out the Polaroids, Tobin glanced round the dance floor for sight of Cindy. But nothing. He saw all the others on the 'Celebrity Circle' dais-and they all glowered at him whenever he made eye contact-except Cindy and Kevin Anderson.
My God, what if…
'It's such a great show,' the Wicked Witch said. 'Beg pardon?'
'The show. 'Celebrity Circle.' It's great.'
'Oh. Thanks. But I'm only doing this cruise and then I'm gone.'
'Everybody looks like they're having so much fun.' She giggled her annoying giggle again. The song was interminable. 'I'd pay to be on that panel. I really would.'
'Yes,' Tobin said, on autopilot now, and only half-listening to her.
He was fearing the worst. That Kevin had sweet-talked Cindy…
The song, at last, ended and the woman said, rather threateningly really, 'Did you get some good ones, Henry?'
'I got some wonderful ones, honey.' He said 'shome' and he said 'wunnerful' and saying so nearly fell over, from the booze, backwards.
'Thanks,' Tobin said, extricating himself from her grasp. 'I really enjoyed it.'
And then he was off to the dais, pressing himself through dancers and sweet-talkers and boosters and sots, and at last he reached the dais and felt the laserlike collective glare of the 'Celebrity Circle' group searing through him.
'Looks like Cindy dumped you again, Tobin,' Jere Farris said.
'She wanted somebody who could get it up in less than a half-hour,' said America's favorite school teacher, Cassie McDowell.
Only Susan Richards had the grace to look embarrassed at Cassie's drunken ugliness.
He turned back to the end of the table where Joanna Howard sat talking to a busboy who was obviously about her speed-neither one appeared to know how to put the moves on anybody.
He went up to her. 'Have you seen Cindy?'
She glanced up and then frowned. 'She… left.'
Tobin cleared his throat. 'Kevin?'
