Celebrity Sudoku (11 page)

“Maybe,” she snarled as she reached her limo, the driver holding the door ready for her.

Liza jerked her head toward Forty Oz. “At least you didn’t ask if I was
his
grandmother.”

Liza yawned, stretched . . . and winced as her knee complained about the sudden movement. She blinked her eyes and looked owlishly around the unfamiliar room.

No, not so unfamiliar; just a room she hadn’t been in for a while.

Michael had tried hard to make his office space into a hospitable guest room. His teak computer desk with the swing-out front for a printer had been closed and cleared for the first time in her memory. A bed had been shoehorned into the resulting open space, and someone—maybe Michelle—had attempted to make the place a little cozier, turning the closed-up desk into a combined lamp and cosmetics table with a little mirror with a gilt frame and a marble base, a woven mat, even an antique clock. Nobody could do much about camouflaging the three walls lined with bookcases, though.

No wonder I kept dreaming about being lost in the library,
Liza thought.

She’d slept pretty well, although that might be put down to the late hour when she’d gotten home and the painkiller she’d popped before going to bed.

Liza gingerly worked herself to the foot of the bed and slipped into the robe she’d left there. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of space to maneuver the walker, but she made it to the door and then to the bathroom.

She emerged to find Michael already up, clad in an old T-shirt pulled over a pair of sweats. “Morning,” he said. “Feel like some breakfast?”

Liza took a deep breath, savoring the scent of coffee already on the drip. “Mmmmmm. Coffee. Good.”

Michael nodded. “Yes, coffee good. Breakfast better. Want some?”

“Want lots,” Liza replied with a grin, getting her walker into motion.

When they got installed in the kitchen, they had a very cheerful breakfast of pancakes, eggs, orange juice, and coffee.

“You pulled out all the stops,” Liza said, chasing a smear of maple syrup on her plate with her last forkful of pancake.

“It must have done good work,” Michael replied. “You’re speaking in full sentences again.”

Laughing, Liza settled back in her chair with a cup of coffee. Then the phone rang.

As Michael answered, his smile faded away. “Yes, she is here.” He stepped over to hand Liza the handset.

Liza raised it to her ear. “This is Liza Kelly.”

“Could you hold, please, for Mr. Tarleton?”

Well, now I can understand Michael’s expression,
Liza thought in the brief interval before another voice came on—a much shorter interval than usual for executive suite politicos.

“Ms. Kelly, I’m sorry to impose on you.”

The last time Liza had heard that voice, Fritz Tarleton had confidently expected to push on with a hunt for a dead man’s treasure. The tourism tycoon sounded a lot more tentative now.

“You certainly tracked me down,” Liza told him. They had been rivals that last time around, and Michelle had played pretty rough to make him back off.

“I—I’d like to meet with you, if possible. About what happened—” His voice broke. “About what happened to Ritz.”

Liza looked at the phone. The usually imperious Mr. Tarleton was almost begging her.

“Perhaps an hour—” She glanced down at her robe. “Or maybe an hour and a half?”

She was about to ask where his office was, but he surprised her, saying, “I’ll be out there in an hour and a half, then.”

 

 

After a shower and a change of clothes, Liza found herself in the recliner, her hurt knee elevated—and her walker out of reach.

Maybe that’s just as well,
she ruefully told herself. In normal circumstances, she’d be creating a rut in the rug pacing back and forth in anticipation of Fritz Tarleton’s arrival. Unfortunately, neither her walker nor her knee was exactly up to that job right now.

Michael had stationed himself by the living room window, peeking out at the street from behind the curtain.

“There’s a limousine pulling into the driveway,” he finally reported. “That should interest the neighbors—two limos in as many days.”

He rushed over to the front door and had it open probably before Tarleton’s chauffeur had done the same job on the limo.

Fritz Tarleton looked out of place in the comfortable but slightly shabby living room.

The fact was, the price of his haircut could probably finance a replacement for the sofa. The money that went into his suit could probably renovate the whole living room—and get a start on the kitchen, too.

The man inside the expensive clothing had that George Clooney/John Forsythe look, Central Casting’s vision of the high-powered business executive.

Liza remembered that from her previous run-in with Tarleton. He acted as if his money and power could allow him to get his way against anyone. It had taken Michelle Markson and an embarrassing sex video Ritz had recorded of herself to get Fritz Tarleton to back down.

Now, however, the tourism tycoon seemed somehow . . . shrunken.

Was that a result of the financial meltdown, or was it the loss of his daughter?

Tarleton seemed to be reading her mind. “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot when we first met,” he said. “I was so hypnotized by the idea of getting that painting that I acted like a prize jerk.”

He shook his head. “Guess I learned a little late about what’s really important. Like my little girl.”

Tarleton looked down at her, his expression admitting the irony of his words, but his eyes showing a pain that broke Liza’s heart. “She was a little girl once, you know. As for what she grew up to be—”

He broke off. “Now I’m hearing rumors that her death may not be the accident we thought at first. My sources may not be as extensive as your partner’s, but they’re good enough.” Tarleton paused. “They also tell me you’re asking some questions about Ritz.”

“It’s not—I haven’t—” Liza floundered for a minute, trying to explain what she was doing and realizing that she didn’t really have a clear idea of that herself. She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to intrude on something that’s obviously painful for you. There were just some questions about what Ritz had on her mind before the earthquake.”

Fritz Tarleton sank into a chair off to the side of the sofa, giving her a long look. “You think I’m here to tell you to stay out of this, to forget about Ritz.” He gave her a very definite headshake. “I came to offer any help I can with an investigation. I’ve already told my head of security, Jim McShane, to give you any information he can, nothing held back.”

“I’m not sure what I’m investigating,” Liza said, embarrassed. “And I certainly can’t make any promises—”

“I’m only too aware of that.” Tarleton’s regular features tightened as he spoke. “But you’ve managed to get to the bottom of some pretty odd cases—cases the police might not have solved. And I’m not trying to tell you what to do—only that there are resources available if you need them.”

Liza stewed for a few seconds more, unwilling to commit herself. She looked over at Michael, who stood behind Tarleton. He shrugged and held out empty hands, as unsure about what to say as she was.

“I don’t know what the police are looking into, and I’m not sure this really has any connection to what happened,” Liza told the tour baron. “But I’ve heard from several people that Ritz had something going, and it involved the celebrity competition on
D-Kodas
. Do you have any idea what that might be?”

Fritz Tarleton slowly shook his head. “I don’t know what exactly she might have been up to. But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, after my last conversation with her.”

Michael leaned forward. “What was that?”

Tarleton sighed. “It was the end of a conversation extending over several months, about . . . what Ritz was supposed to do when she grew up.”

He looked the picture of a baffled father. “When she turned twenty-five, I told Ritz she had to develop some talent other than picking up checks. She wanted me to put up the money to option a script and produce a movie for her. I told her it was high time that she developed some interest in the family business. She spent about a month traveling around, touching base with some of the key people in our operation.”

His lips puckered, as if he’d just taken a healthy swallow of vinegar masquerading as fine wine. “She told me it was boring.”

Liza had nothing to say to that. For a man who had devoted himself to upgrading his father’s package tour business, making the connections to create a deluxe travel operation, Ritz’s comment couldn’t have gone down well.

“So what did you do?” Michael asked.

“I pointed out that with her background, she could make an excellent ambassador for the business.” Even the memory of the conversation made Tarleton’s temper flare. “All she had to do was apply herself. Instead, she came to me with some harebrained idea about underwriting the pilot for a sitcom she could star in.”

Anger and anguish warred on Tarleton’s face. “I told her it was time she started living in reality—that from here on, the bank was closed.” He shot them a pleading look. “She had a separate trust fund from her grandmother—I thought she could live on that while she thought about her options. How was I to know she’d run through that money already?”

Liza figured it was her turn to ask a question. “So what did Ritz do?”

“Her mother told me that she tried to get onto one of those reality shows. There was
Celebrity Undercover
, where they were supposed to go out and take different jobs week after week, with the one fooling the most people winning. Then she tried for Trump’s show. But her competition was either more famous or younger. Ritz thought she had a shot at becoming a regular on one of those celebrity prank shows. From the way she could always talk people into doing things, she thought she’d be a natural for that. But the show fell through. I think she tried for one of those celebrity gossip shows, and then there was the dancing show.”

“We heard how that turned out,” Liza said. “It must have been a bitter pill for her to swallow when all she could get was Celebrity Week on
D-Kodas
.” Ritz had never been a brightly shining star. But lately even that had been fading. Now it turned out she wasn’t just being hit in the ego, but in the wallet, too.

“But don’t you see?” Exasperation burst through Fritz Tarleton’s pain. “Being the Tarleton Tours ambassador would have been all about celebrity—publicity, going to the most glamorous places on Earth . . .”

Except that to the people in Ritz’s circle, the ones she wanted to impress, it would seem more like being a glorified tour guide, or the hostess in a restaurant . . . or even the chauffeur for your limo,
Liza thought. But Fritz Tarleton couldn’t see that, just as he didn’t realize that while his clients might be rich and famous, they just considered him a travel agent.

Tarleton slumped in his chair. “Was that such a bad thing?” he asked, his voice plaintive.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Liza carefully replied. “But I guess it wasn’t what Ritz wanted.”

Fritz Tarleton sat silent for a moment and then slowly got up. “I hope you can figure out some way to go at this.” His voice was heavy as he spoke. He knew he was missing something in this situation, but Liza found herself hoping he wouldn’t figure out how Ritz must have felt.

“Remember, if there’s anything you need ...” Tarleton fumbled in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, coming out with two Tarleton Tours business cards. One had his name and direct office line. The other was for Jim McShane, the security director.

“Uh—thanks.” Liza sounded as awkward as she felt, pushing herself up on the arm of the couch, balancing on her good leg. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see if there are any developments.”

They shook hands and she watched him go out to his limo.

Michael came back from closing the door. “So what do you think?” he said briskly. “Should we follow along the path of Ritz’s ambassadorial tour? With luck, our investigation could take us to Hawaii or Acapulco.”

“I think that would be taking advantage of a very distraught man.” Liza plumped down onto the couch and let out a little yelp of pain.
Still playing too rough for that knee,
she told herself.

Aloud, she said, “We got a bit more motive for whatever scam Ritz was pulling, but no specifics about what she was up to.”

“We still have a few of the celebrity contestants left to talk to,” Michael suggested. “Maybe Ritz said something to them. Claudio Day is off in Denver for an exhibition game, and I guess Samantha Pang is back teaching—where was that? San Francisco, I think.”

Liza gave him a look. “Before you start suggesting a weekend at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel to go and interview her, I’ve got to say that this knee isn’t up for an extended road trip.”

She thought for a moment. “Wish Dudek could probably rustle up a phone number for Sam Pang. And maybe Buck could do the same for Claudio Day.”

 

 

As things turned out, Michelle Markson got the contact number for Claudio Day, through the football player’s sports agent. That agent had also promised to call Day and give him the heads-up, but the quarterback sounded surprised and a little hazy to hear from her.

First rule of Hollywood,
Liza thought sourly.
Never trust anything an agent tells you.

“Yes, Liza Kelly,” she repeated for the third time. “Arlie Macomber gave me this number. We met on the set of
D-Kodas
.” Liza fought to keep her sigh from becoming audible. “No, not Arlie and me;
you
and me. I explained the rules for the first puzzle.”

“Y’know,” Claudio said, “I don’t think that was as clear as it could have been.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Liza told him.
Maybe you should have read through the explanation and practice puzzles in your briefing book,
she added in her brain.