Away in a Murder (6 page)

Frank pulled out his phone and left the room to call the park’s security office. While I waited I paced the floor. Everyone but Marlowe kept telling me to sit. I think only he knew that sitting wasn’t possible at that moment.

When he came back in Frank said, “They’re investigating it now. They’ll call me back when they figure it out.”

“Ok. Frankie, call Nigel, see if he saw the interview,” I said. “If so, get him over here. We have to figure out how to battle this.”

Frankie got on his phone. That’s when Frank’s phone rang again. He left the room to answer it. My phone kept ringing. I ignored it. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it right now.

When Frank hung up he said, “One of the TV crew’s guys messed with the system and disconnected the audio. We can’t tell if he did it on purpose.”

“Of course he did it on purpose,” I said.

Frankie walked back in. “Nigel’s on his way. He saw the interview. He’s freaking out.”

“He’s freaking out,” I said.

“He feels responsible, Mom.”

I took a deep breath and collected myself. “It’s not his fault. Although next time somebody wants to interview me he had better research them before giving them an answer.”

Everyone in the room agreed to that.

“Ok,” I said, “Enough with the anger. How do we combat this? We need to problem solve.”

The room got quiet. I suppose everyone was thinking. That’s when my phone rang again. I looked at it this time.

“It’s Angie,” I said. “I guess she saw the interview.”

Frankie took the phone out of my hand. “I’ll talk to her,” he said. He answered my phone and left the room.

Great. My daughter was calling from New Mexico. I hoped the fake news report wouldn’t affect her husband’s professorship. Oh, hell, I hoped he didn’t believe it. I hoped his family didn’t believe it.

The buzzer for the gate rang. It made me jump about a mile. Frank got up and answered it. It was Nigel.

At that moment Frankie came out of my bedroom, phone in hand. “Well, at least Angie and Antonio don’t believe it. Actually they’re both pretty angry. Angie says hire a lawyer, but people have tried that with that Al guy before. It doesn’t work.”

“I was hoping she’d never learn about it,” I said.

“She saw the commercial. At first she was mad that you didn’t tell her. Now she knows why. She says call her when you can.”

I nodded my head and took my phone from my son.

Nigel entered the apartment I told him we were trying to figure out a way to combat the damage the interview will cause.

“Oh, I already thought about it,” Nigel said. “How about if we invite him back down? He can stay in the hotel for free. Misty, you can meet with him again and we can record the entire thing. You’re good under pressure. Then we’ll air the footage ourselves.”

“Nigel, you’re brilliant,” I said. I really liked his idea.

“That’s what you pay me for,” he said. He almost smiled, but not quite.

“Ok, let’s do this,” I said.

Nigel got on his phone and called Al. Al answered right away. He jumped at the opportunity to come back here. He would fly in tonight and we would meet tomorrow afternoon. Nigel would meet him and bring him to the park personally. No, he didn’t need his whole crew. Just maybe a camera man and an audio guy.

After Nigel hung up Frank got on his phone and called park security again. I called the hotel to get a room for Al. The best room we had available. In fact it was the first room available on the third floor. The rest were still being renovated. Good, this way he would be away from the other guests.

Frankie had to leave around ten to pick his friend Pete up from the airport. He wanted to stay and tell Pete to take a cab, but I thought he should put his friend first.

Then the remaining six of us sat around and planned our strategy for taking Al down. It was a long night, but we finally came up with a plan. It wasn’t until after midnight that everyone finally left.

I didn’t sleep at all that night. Instead I paced and tried to do things to distract myself. It didn’t work. I just kept hearing Al’s voice accusing me of doing dreadful things with my son.

In the morning I was all set to go to work. I thought maybe I’d get to the interview site early. However, when I looked out of my window I saw several news vans and even the reporter from the local paper camped out on my lawn. This was curious because I had a security gate and you had to know the code to get in. And it closed after each vehicle. I had it programmed so that it looked like it would scratch but not seriously dent any car that tried to follow another one in. So how did they beat it?

I really only had the gate installed so that the guests at the hotel did not wander on to my private property. I wanted a definite separation between me and them. Now, however, I wanted if for security reasons. These reporters scared me. If they could get in, who else could?

I called Frankie and told him about the reporters. He already knew, and he had let Della know that we would not be in right away. On the plus side Frankie’s friend Pete had gotten in safely last night and the three of us could get together for dinner tonight.

Next I called Marlowe. First I could not figure out how the reporters got past my gate to get to my house. Second, they were absolutely ruining my lawn. I just paid good money to have the lawn done, and they were ruining it. My God, I was starting to have flash backs to when Misty Breeze died. I learned to hate reporters then. I didn’t want that to happen again.

“Hi, Marlowe, it’s Misty,” I said when he answered the phone.

“What’s wrong? Is that reporter guy bugging you? Want me to arrest him?”

He sounded rather panicked. I thought the comment about arresting Al was a joke, but I wasn’t so sure.

“Not yet, thank you. But apparently someone got through my gate this morning. I’ve got reporters and news vans camped out in front of my house.”

“What? How’d they get through your gate?”

“That’s the question of the hour,” I said.

“I’ll send my guys out to get rid of them. I don’t want to come myself because there are already rumors about us and I don’t want the news to get the wrong impression.”

“Rumors? We haven’t even gone on a date yet. But I get it. Thank you.”

“Speaking of that date. A new restaurant opened up in town. It’s supposed to be pretty good. Would you like to go to dinner?”

Yes! Yes! Yes! Finally!

Out loud in a much calmer voice I said, “Sure, when?”

“Well, what night are you free?”

“Ok, well, I’m going to use today as a recovery day. In other words I’m hiding.”

“I get it. But you can’t hide forever.”

“I know. I’ll be at the park for the interview but not before then it would seem. Yea, what the hell. Tomorrow night we’ll go out and we’ll celebrate my surviving the interview.”

“You will. Survive, that is. What time tomorrow night?”

I really didn’t hear Marlowe. Instead I heard a car pull up out front. I peeked out of my window. The police were here. One of the officers pulled out a bullhorn and asked the reporters to leave the private property or risk being arrested for trespassing and having their vehicles towed.

“You’re men are here. Thank you. I gotta go. I’m going to call the gate company. I want to know how these people got in,” I said.

That’s when someone rang my door bell. I answered it and learned that it was one of the police officers.  I pressed the buzzer to let him in. I waited for him to climb the stairs. Technically I was on the second floor of the building. The first floor was one huge garage.

When he knocked on my door I looked through the peek hole just to make sure it was him and not someone else. I opened the door for him.

“Mrs. Summer, I just want you to know that we are getting everyone off of your lawn. It looks like someone actually tampered with your gate and got to the wires in the key pad. I’m calling it in and we’ll have our forensics team come down here and investigate,” he said.

“Forensics team?” I asked. Last I knew our entire police force consisted of only about ten people total. None of them specialized in forensics.

“Yea,” he smiled, “we hired a guy last week.”

One man does not a team make. But I wasn’t telling him that, he looked way too excited. Besides, one expert was better than no experts.

“Oh, wonderful. I’m going to call the alarm company to fix the gate, so could you please let me know when the forensics team is done?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am we will.”

“Then again, if the person from the alarm company gets here and your forensics guy is still working, he’ll just have to wait. I am that mad.”

“Won’t you have to pay for that?” he asked.

“Nope, got one hell of a warrantee.”

I thanked the officer and he left.

I called the alarm company and gave them a piece of my mind. Since I was not just a home owner with a gate issue, but also the owner of both a theme park and a hotel with which they have an account, they sent someone out right away.

When the man from the gate company arrived he explained that someone was actually able to pry the keypad open and sort of hot wire the thing to get the main gate to open. The gate that accesses the park however was ok. He’d have to order new parts for the broken gate and it would take a few days. In the mean time the company would send a guard out to be at the gate around the clock. He showed me the first guy’s picture and told me his name. He also sent the information to Frankie and I via e-mail. He included photos of all the guards who would be there in various shifts.

“Check the e-mail as soon as possible and let him know the list of people who he can let in. Pictures would be helpful,” the man said.

“Ok. I’ll get my son on that right away.”

“Also, have you thought about having security cameras installed? If you had them now maybe we’d be able to see who tampered with the gate.”

“I had not considered that until now. But yes, cameras seem like they would be a good idea after all of this.”

He explained how the cameras worked and how I could access them through the smart phone that I didn’t have, through the internet, or through an optional monitor. I had him add the monitors. Two for my apartment, one for each of the bedrooms upstairs and one in the main room upstairs.

I had him take the same action with the back gate. You know the one that serves as my private entrance to the park? No sense in taking chances. Better paranoid than sorry.

Then his phone rang. He excused himself and took the call. When he hung up he informed me that the guard was at the front gate. He told me when he’d be back to make all of the updates and he left.

I called Frankie and told him what happened with the gate.

“Oh, my God, Mom, that’s scary. Pete and I are on our way down to see you anyway, just hold on.”

Why? Why were they coming to see me? Shouldn’t Frankie go to work? He and I worked a very flexible schedule. Some days we were there for only a couple of hours, sometimes we were there for twelve to fourteen hours. We did our best to be there every day. The park was still newly reopened and we felt we needed to be on site to combat the issues that cropped up on an almost daily basis.

Frankie knocked on my door. I yelled for him to come in. He and Pete walked thought the door. I smiled at Pete immediately. I really liked him. I was glad Frankie had a real friend around, someone he could talk to. Men do that, right?

Pete reminded me of a young Fred Astaire. He was tall, but not taller than Frankie, and skinny. And there was something in him that reminded me of the world famous dancer. Maybe it was the laughing eyes. Maybe it was the graceful way in which he moved. I wasn’t sure what the reason was, but there were times I almost called him Fred.

I asked Pete the general questions about his flight, etc. Everything had gone well for him. I was glad. Then Frankie got to the real reason they were here.

“We’ve come to escort you to the interview,” he said.

“You’re not wearing that, are you?” Pete asked.

I looked down at my outfit. It was a navy suit with a pink blouse. I thought I looked good.

“Don’t worry,” Pete said, “we’ll help.”

I didn’t know I needed help.

The three of us walked to my closet. Pete commented that it was bigger than his apartment in Pennsylvania.

We got down to the business of picking out something for me to wear. Not too tight. Not sexy. Very high heels, since I wanted to tower over Al and I had no plans to sit this time. We settle for a grey pinstriped pant suit. My shoes were black and grey spectators, my blouse a powder blue, and my accessories were pink. Nothing sexy here. And I had to admit that it looked better than what I had on earlier.

The three of us walked to the park together. We got an executive guest pass for Pete at the guard gate and then we all walked to the building where I was to meet with Al. When we got inside I noticed that everyone from the original taping was there. However, I saw no sign of Al and his crew. I looked at Frank.

“They’re just coming in the back gate now,” he said. “Don’t worry, I double and triple checked everything. Plus one of our audio guys is here to ensure nothing gets disconnected. And he hid microphones all over the place as a back up.”

“And,” Nigel said, “I have my own back up.” He winked and smiled at me. He was looking more confident. I was glad.

“What’s your back up?” I asked him.

He winked at me again. “It’s a secret.”

That’s when Al and his two man crew arrived. The crew began to set up and were being supervised by the park’s own crew. Al walked over to me. He extended his hand and I accepted his hand shake. He had to look up to look me in the eye. I loved it.

“Are you ready,” he asked.

“As soon as you are,” I said.

“Where do we sit?” he asked.

“We’re standing today.”

“Oh, that’s unusual, but OK.” Was it me, or did he look uneasy as he said it? Maybe it was a height thing. One of his crew brought over a box for Al to stand on. Now we were eye to eye. Yep, definitely a height thing.

Then his crew let him know they were ready. I looked at our audio guy. He gave me a nod. Ok, let the good times roll.

“So, Al,” I said, “I bet you want to know why I asked you back here.”

“No, I know why. You think you can talk me in to retracting my story. But you can’t.” He gave me an evil smile.

“No, I get that. I just wanted to hear you say to me that you know that I never admitted to having an incestual relationship with my son.”

“No you didn’t admit to it. But you also said you weren’t Misty Breeze. I had to find some dirt. The story was boring otherwise.”

Boring? So ruining other people’s lives was the only thing he could think of to do to keep from getting bored? What was wrong with him? And with the people who watched his show?

“But you edited the footage and the audio to make it look like I was not only having an inappropriate relationship with my son, but that I was proud of it.”

“Ah, the magic of editing,” he smiled at me.

“So you admit that I never said it?”

“Sure, but it doesn’t matter. The world believes that it’s true, so it’s true. I could run a story that would retract it and I could apologize to you and your son, but people would just believe that you threatened me and made me do it.”

“And you did all of this just because you could not get me to admit that I was some long lost rock star named Misty Breeze.”

“I did. And, I don’t think you’re Misty Breeze any more. You’re too young and not nearly pretty enough.”

I smiled at him. “Well, thank you.”

“But it won’t get you anywhere. The only witnesses you have are your family. Your employees. They’ll say anything to protect you.”

“No, they won’t,” I said. “In fact, they don’t have to. I have proof now that you lied.”

“Oh, what? You mean your recording? My audio guy unplugged your audio last time and he did it again this time too.”

“And my audio guy plugged ours back in. Besides, there are a series of microphones hidden around this room. We are capturing everything you are saying and doing. A number of ways.”

He froze for a moment. I don’t think anyone had done this to him before.

“No”, he said, “no one will ever believe you.”

“Oh, I think anyone who watches the news will believe her,” a man’s voice said.

At that moment, from behind a curtain walked out a nationally known news reporter with a great reputation for the truth. He walked over to Al.

“Mr. Learner,” he said, “would you like to comment on what just happened?”

Al’s face turned red. He was embarrassed and he was angry. He raised his hand in the air and pointed at Frankie and Pete.

“Well. I know you’re not having a sexual relationship with your son because he’s gay. His boyfriend is right there”

“Mr. Learner,” I said, “making up stories will not help deflect your guilt.”