P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 02 - Exile on Slain Street (10 page)

“He kissed you,” I pointed out. “Twice. He didn’t kiss me until elimination.”

“Only because you turned your head at the wrong time, dum dum!”

She had a point. “You saw that?” I asked.

“Why would Little Miss Flame Throwa get all shy? You gotta be careful about those mixed signals! Didn’t you watch last season?”

I said, “I did. I thought I could handle it, but it moves so fast here. It’s like he swoops down on you all of a sudden, and you have to brace yourself for the impact. I had a brain freeze.”

Cookie started pulling plastic bags of toiletries and rolled-up lingerie from her bag. “You better make a commitment, girl.” She turned to me and smiled. “Only the strong are going to survive around here.”

Chapter Eleven:
Mike Watt, Meet Dating Show

I
n the morning, an alarm sounded throughout the house. Greg’s voice burst over the intercom system. “Good morning, ladies. Time to wakey-wakey.”

I pried open my eyelids with my fingers. It was still dark outside. “Can’t we sleep in?” I was a musician. I never got up before ten unless a client offered to pay me to do so. And I usually charged extra for morning surveillance.

I tried to roll out of my bunk and almost landed on Andi’s sleeping body. Apparently she had intended to sleep on the only non-bunk bed and somehow wound up on the floor. “How the hell did you get there?” I asked.

After nudging her several times, I looked up to see Hare sticking his camera in my face. “Do you sleep?” I asked.

“This is my first real job. So the answer is no,” he said. He stepped back without moving the camera from me and poked Tortoise, who was taking a little nap on a stuffed chair in our room.

“Please take note of your bathroom roll call, which has been taped to your bedroom door,” Greg’s voice blared. “You may be in the bathrooms one at a time. If two of you enter the bathroom, the crew will enter. Unless you want the crew in there, go in by yourself.”

I pushed Andi one last time and then wandered over to the bathroom to see our order. Dawn was first, so I went to wake her up. Meanwhile, Andi awakened with Hare’s camera in her face. She screamed.

Since I was up before everyone else, I sneaked away from Tortoise and Hare and started to head downstairs for a glass of water, but an arm popped out of a closet and yanked me inside. It was Kevin, leaning against a tall antique chest of drawers that was probably shoved in there so as not to clash with rest of the mansion’s Vegas décor. “Are you mic’d?” he whispered in my ear.

I shook my head no. Since Tortoise the sound guy was sleeping when I got up, I escaped without his noticing.

“We gotta talk fast before the other women get up. What was going on with that stripper pole?” he asked.

I tripped over a stack of coiled cord before I could get close to him. “The stalker made a visit,” I said. “The bolt’s threads had been filed down. I kept the bolt. So, whoever did it had to have some alone time in the house.”

“Not likely. This place has been crawling with people. We didn’t install the damn thing until the day before yesterday. And, look, I think Greg is an idiot, but he doesn’t want to get sued any more than I do. You don’t think Dawn’s gonna sue us, do you?”

“No. She probably thinks it’s her fault.”

Kevin let out a sigh of relief.

“Dawn is the least of your problems. You only had me do background checks on the contestants. But what’s up with the crew? You said they wanted raises?”

“They’re all guys. And they had to be too busy yesterday. And what about that note we found? The purple stalker note? Does that sound like any of the contestants?”

“That might have come from the crew,” I said. “Are you sure the person who wrote that letter is a woman?”

“Oh, you gotta be kidding.” Kevin pressed harder against the chest. It creaked like it was going to collapse beneath him. I heard footsteps pass. Then they stopped and continued again.

I moved closer in case anyone else passed by. I whispered, “Crazier things have happened. So the poem was in feminine handwriting and perfumed. So what? The person who wrote that note might be a guy who is in touch with his feminine side. Or a disgruntled crew member tossing out a red herring.”

Kevin sighed, “I don’t think anyone on the crew is that clever.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that the crew had better access to the stripper pole than the women did… unless some of the women got to visit the mansion early. Is that possible?”

“Yeah. We had to chase some of the women away from the grounds when the caterers came. We shot here last season, so it’s easy to find.”

“Find out who got here early, and tell me. And look into the caterers and get back to me on the crew, okay? Do you have time for that?”

“I’ll make time for it,” he replied. Then he jumped away from the chest of drawers and pulled on one of the handles. Instead of a drawer coming out, the entire chest opened like a door.

“So that’s how Patrick got away so fast last night,” I said.

Kevin smiled. “Secret passages. You’re one of the few who knows. Keep it that way. And, if it gets ugly and you need a weapon, just open the door and go down the stairs. There’s a loaded gun in the bottom step. Lift the loose board, and you’ll find it. Got it?”

“Yep,” I said. At least I finally had something with which to defend myself, aside from a hot hair iron and some Aqua Net.

“Now I go out here, and you go out the way you came in.” With that he stuffed himself in the little space and vanished. I heard the sound of his body brushing against the walls. I waited until it got quiet in the hall, and then I jumped out and ran for the bathroom.

Greg announced on the intercom that we were to gather at 9:00 am for the day’s challenge. No one was really in the mood to talk. Some women had to re-introduce themselves because they were so drunk they couldn’t remember any of the names.

Cookie, Dawn, and I all got dressed. Andi was already gone, probably down by the bar. Cookie was humming “High Tide” to herself and carefully choosing her wardrobe.

As I listened to Cookie’s humming, I remembered what Dawn told me the night before. Cookie wasn’t on Dawn’s list of women who had taken a turn on the stripper pole. Cookie could have sabotaged that pole and steered clear the rest of the night. Since she was a pro, she would have known what to do.

Cookie’s adoration of Patrick also made her suspicious. I noticed she even chose the bed that was right beside a Nuclear Kings poster. All she had to do was lie down on the bunk, and she had a perfect view of Patrick Price’s face. That kind of passion certainly had the potential to turn into obsession, which gave her the perfect motive to hurt other contestants.

Cookie caught me looking at her. “Sizing up your competition?”

I laughed. “What competition?” She threw a pillow at me in response.

Meanwhile, Dawn was pulling on black tights to cover up the purple-and-green bruise that had formed on her inner thigh. “Yeah, what competition? You guys are competition. I’m not competition. I’m the klutz on the pole.”

I thought she was going to cry. Cookie swung into action. “Now, look. You gotta keep moving on. It made him remember you. He probably remembers you better than he does me. Maybe I should have an accident myself!”

“I wouldn’t recommend it!” I said suddenly. I didn’t want anyone in that house growing accustomed to unusual accidents.

Cookie rolled her long black hair into a French twist. “Okay, Mom.”

I shrugged. “It’s just that… you didn’t see Dawn fall. It was scary. She almost went through the window!”

Dawn stood up, teetering slightly and smoothing out the wrinkles in her tights. “I’m gonna be okay. It’s just my ego. National television and all that.”

She seemed unusually depressed, almost too much so for what happened. It crossed my mind that maybe she sabotaged the pole herself to get the kind of attention she probably would not have received otherwise. But, if that were the case, how had she gotten up to the house to get the job done?

Then Greg announced, “Contestants to the foyer in five minutes. Five minutes, please.”

Soon enough, we headed downstairs, and Kevin told us we were taking a field trip. Then we were herded into three small vans, enough to carry a small group of women plus camera and sound. Cookie and I were running late and wound up in the last van, which meant I got stuck sitting near Tortoise and Hare. “Don’t you people have names?” I asked.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Hare said. “Now, ladies, let’s talk about last night. You guys get into any good fights last night? You guys want any Major Rager? We got it in the cooler.”

Tortoise grumbled, “I need some Major Rager.”

“With booze!” Cookie chimed in.

“You’re my kind of gal,” Tortoise replied.

We drove into San Rafael, and we pulled into the parking lot of a squat concrete building. Throughout the drive, I wondered what else the crew might be sabotaging in the house while we were gone. The other two vans were already there.

Greg ran around the vans as we were getting out, and he had us all line up first. He made sure that each of us was wired for sound, and then he and Kevin tied blindfolds over our eyes before we entered the building. “I’ve already had to deal with a jailbreak today, and I’m not dealing with another one…” Greg grumbled.

“Jailbreak?” I asked as he tied the blindfold around my head too tightly.

“Oh, some of your fellow contestants thought it would be cute to run out for some wine coolers,” he complained.

I heard Tina’s voice off in the distance, saying, “Oh, don’t be a spoilsport! I saved one for you!” Then a bunch of women giggled — maybe Topaz, maybe Lorelai, but I couldn’t be sure. I could definitely hear Andi’s high-pitched squeal.

Someone took my hand and led me into a much-warmer space. I heard the rustling of people and other contestants cursing as they tripped over stuff in the darkness.

I felt someone pull back my shoulders so I stood up straighter. Then the blindfold came off, and light flooded into my face. We were in what appeared to be the studio for a community-access station, and about 50 people had been wedged into folding seats. Most of them were punkers or looked to be in bands. I saw a lot of older guys who were wearing flannel.

Patrick was down among the audience, only he was wearing a black suit and a red tie. He stood behind a podium, as if he were a game-show host. “Welcome to Rock ‘n’ Roll Trivia! I’ve been getting to know all of you on a one-on-one basis — ”

“Lucky!” a burly dude from the audience shouted. A few of the others wolf whistled. With my green miniskirt and skimpy black tank top, I was wearing far less than what I usually wore onstage. I wished I could hide behind my guitar or at least cover myself up with a cardigan.

“Hell, yeah, dude!” Patrick replied. Then he launched into a spiel. “As I said, I’ve been getting to know all of you, but I gotta know how you feel about music. Music continues to be my life, and I still tour. To me, there’s no life without music. Last season, I chose a beautiful woman, but she didn’t know a thing about music. And we all know how that turned out. What’s on the inside is just as important as what’s on the outside. So, I need to find out how much you know about the songs and the bands that influenced me.”

He paused, and the producers made him repeat the lines again so he said “what’s on the
inside
is just as important as what’s on the outside.” As Patrick struggled to say “inside” with the right amount of emphasis, Greg ran over and picked up a stray blindfold that had fallen at my feet. I leaned down toward him and asked, “Uh, trivia? Don’t you think ‘Name That Tune’ would have been better? Or even karaoke?”

Greg shook his head. “You would not believe how expensive song rights are. Hell, no. We couldn’t even get the rights to the Nuclear Kings!”

I began to plot my strategy. It wasn’t clear if we were going to be answering basic rock ‘n’ roll trivia or just stuff about Patrick and the Nuclear Kings, which would have been boring. They had hits, sure, but I wasn’t sure they generated enough trivia to feed an entire competition.

Andi wound up first in line, and Greg aimed her toward an “X” that had been marked with duct tape in the middle of the stage. Of course, they could edit it to make it look like she started anywhere, but having her go first was a savvy move that relaxed all the other contestants. Whatever we did, we would all feel smarter next to her. And, the best part about Andi was that it didn’t seem cruel since she had such a blissful lack of self-awareness.

After a makeup artist applied some powder to a shiny spot on his scalp, Patrick read the first question: “Which California rock band’s first albums in the 80s included
Freaky Styley
and
The Uplift Mofo Party Plan
?”

That was such a softball they may as well have lobbed a real one at Andi’s head. It was the Red Hot Chili Peppers, of course. Granted, those albums may have been released before she was born — hell, I was watching
Sesame Street
when they came out — but anyone who claimed to be an alternative rock fan had to have a passing knowledge of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I glanced back at Cookie, and she was going into absolute contortions because she knew the answer.

Andi was thinking hard. I could see a blue vein pop up on her forehead as her brain tried to come up with something. “‘80s… ‘80s… Was it those guys who did ‘Whip It’? You know! Whip it good!” She resorted to what she usually did when she was in a jam — her sexuality — and she spanked her own behind.

Cookie, who actually did shake her butt for a living but had something known as a memory, simply could not hold it in. “That’s Devo, you dumb — ”

“Wait your turn!” Wolf barked instinctively. Then he realized it was Cookie who was shouting at Andi, and he looked at Cookie as if angels had started to fly around her head.

When Andi couldn’t even muster up Devo’s name, the buzzer went off. Lorelai was next. I wondered how much she would know because she struck me as mainstream. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had mostly adult contemporary stored on her iPod.