he felt when he met with D. J. I was sure my brother was wrong. Nothing would have happened if I hadn’t broken up with my boyfriend at that time. I know it might seem childish, but I started cutting him out of all the prints of the photographs I had. If I hadn’t, I probably never would have really looked closely at that New Year’s Eve photograph.
“‘Ty’s and my first date was that New Year’s Eve. I was living in a building in Studio City owned by a man who loved creative types and offered a low-rent haven for struggling actors, writers and people like me who wanted to work in production. Every year, he gave a party for the tenants. After I saw the picture, I checked back, and though I had never known him, found that D. J. Florian had had an apartment on the floor above me and had been paying his rent on time the whole time he’d claimed he’d been living on the street.’” Barbara paused to let it all sink in before she continued. “‘I did more checking, and there were more and more holes in the story. I didn’t want to tell my brother the details until the show aired, but I gave him one of the photos with D. J. in the background and told him that it looked like he was right.’”
So that must have been what Miles remembered, I thought, feeling a deep sadness that I hadn’t gotten the message in time to save him.
Barbara had a take-no-prisoners look when she turned to D. J. “Is any of it true?” she said.
“I created a hero. People come up to me and say they have hope from reading my blog. They think if I did it, they can. What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with that is that it isn’t true. You didn’t do anything,” Barbara said.
“I almost did. I had the idea of writing a nogel. That’s a novel in blog form. But when I started posting the blog, people believed it was real. So, I let them keep on believing, and then it got a life of it’s own. I based it on a guy I worked with. I just made it more dramatic, with a better ending. In my version, he comes back from his personal hell and starts a new life. The real guy did drugs, got caught and went to jail.”
D. J. began to sweat and move toward the edge of his seat.
As Barbara brought up Robyn’s death, he took off. But he didn’t get far. Detective Heather was waiting off- camera, and I saw her lead him away.
When the show ended, we went backstage. The door was open to the green room, and I saw D. J. and a contingent of cops. “You’ve got nothing on me,” D. J. said. “I had nothing to do with any deaths.” He glared at them as he made a move toward the door, and I realized Heather was going to let him go.
And I was powerless to stop him. Until the lucky sneeze.
From behind me, Adele achooed with such force, she fell into me. “Pink, a tissue,” she wailed and I imagined something embarrassing had happened. When I reached in my jacket pocket and pulled out the tissue, something else came with it. It must have been left from the last time I’d worn the jacket.
The strip of paper had a telephone number written on it, and I remembered I’d marked it down the first time I’d met D. J. in the cafe right after Mason and I did the improv at the production office. While Adele mopped up with the tissue, I unfolded the strip. My mouth fell open and I rushed into the green room and grabbed Detective Heather.
She had a now-what look on her face, and I explained that I’d needed a piece of paper to write D. J.’s phone number on. “He pulled this from his pocket,” I said.
She looked at the paper with a dismissive shrug, but her demeanor changed when she saw what it was. It was actually two strips of paper, both receipts. One was from a general merchandise store and listed Nature’s Sweetie and a shipping box as the items sold. The other receipt was from the post office and showed a package sent and gave the zip code, which I bet was the production office’s.
She signaled one of the uniforms, who grabbed D. J. before he slipped out. She pointed to the receipts in my hand with an expectant expression. “What do you have to say about these?”
D. J. shrugged it off. “Nothing. There’s nothing that ties those receipts to me.” I started to slump as he pulled free of the uniform, but when I lifted my thumb and looked at the store receipt again, I yelled, “Wait.”
It only took a few minutes to confirm the string of numbers my thumb had been hiding, and Detective Heather eyed D. J. with a look of triumph. “How about you used your credit card?”
D. J.’s eyes darted around and he appeared panicky. Then he glared at me.
“If you had just stayed out of it, everything would have been fine.”
“For who?” I said, standing in front of him. “For Robyn and Miles, who are both dead? For Nell, who never would have gotten out of the shadow of suspicion?” I glared back at him.
“I saw the photograph on Robyn’s desk,” he said. “When I realized I was in it, I knew it could ruin everything. I thought Robyn might not have noticed, but then I overheard her telling someone she had a plan to ambush somebody in the middle of their TV appearance. I knew she meant me, and I couldn’t let her do that. Finally, I had gotten my shot at the big time. So what if it wasn’t true. It was a great story and it inspired people. I could have helped so many more people with the self-help plan I was developing. I had to stop her. I had met with her a few times and knew about her obsession with the sweetener. All it took was a razor blade, some cyanide power and a glue gun to fix the packets. Then to make it look like she wasn’t really the intended victim, I added some of the tainted packet to the box in the bookstore cafe and brought in the other box to the police station.
“When I overheard that you’d talked to Miles and he’d remembered something and had a photo, I couldn’t take a chance. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare.” D. J. seemed almost in a trance, as if he didn’t know what he was saying anymore. I understood now how Barry and the other detectives got so many confessions. No matter how they tried to defend themselves, most people who had done horrible things had guilty consciences, and when they were cornered, let it all out. D. J. knew that Miles’ room was on the first floor and had gone to his window. Miles had let him climb in when he’d said he needed to talk to him about something.
He knew the fruit punch was Miles’ favorite and had brought it as a treat. To cover that it had already been opened and the roofies added, he opened the top before he’d handed it to Miles. Then, when Miles had passed out, he’d given him an overdose. D. J. had done enough research that he knew how to get drugs and what to do with them. He thought it would look like Miles was despondent about his sister and had gone back to drugs. He’d simply gone out the front door after.
The guilty-conscience part seemed to fade when he got to talking about our trip to the mountains. It was more like anger that he hadn’t succeeded. “You should have frozen on that mountain.” It had been an impromptu plan, and he regretted that he hadn’t had some roofies to give Adele and me to ensure we froze to death.
I hadn’t realized Adele and the other Hookers had come up behind me until I felt the group hug.
Detective Heather took us out of the green room and shut the door behind her. It was hard for her, but she apologized to Nell for accusing her. She even promised to get Nell’s glue gun and the shirt back to her. It was even harder for her to thank me for my help. She threw in something about it had turned out well, but I had still interfered with a police investigation before she went back into the room.
Word had spread about D. J.’s confession. Talia walked down the hall with Barbara. Talia gave me a thumbs-up and Barbara hugged me in gratitude. “If there’s anything I can do for you,” Barbara said.
“Well, now that you mention it,” I said and pulled Nell out of the group. “How about giving her her job back?”
“Done,” Barbara said, getting ready to walk away.
“There’s something else,” I said. I gave Adele a nod.
We all crowded into Barbara’s dressing room, but I let Adele do the honors. Adele was so discombobulated at getting the opportunity she’d been waiting for, she had to wave for CeeCee to take over. At first, anyway. Just as CeeCee got through demonstrating how to make a foundation chain, Adele found her voice and took over. It turned out that unlike the knitting someone had tried to teach Barbara for the upcoming show, she was a natural at crochet and absolutely loved the idea of impatient crochet.
She waved Talia over. “I insist that we change the upcoming show to knitting and crochet. I want CeeCee and Adele on it, too,” she said. Uh-oh, I wondered if Barbara Olive Overton realized what she was getting into.
The show had gone live in several markets, but before it aired in the rest of them, Pierce Sheraton played a snippet in his daily broadcast. The ratings for the
I found out that Talia and Pierce were together so much because they were a couple, though it was based more on a mutual advantage to aid their careers then a love match.
