Mumbo Gumbo (22 page)

That seemed pretty expensive, even in Hollywood. In addition, the show would have to pay Randy to come in on his day off, at his guild’s minimum. It probably cost Artie close to two thousand dollars just to change two words. Why would he bother? If it was to fix one of the bumper recipes, Dawn Weiss, current-receptionist-and-future-studio-president, had explained that the normal policy was to send out correction letters and be done with it.

I checked the airdate listed on the invoice against the large month-at-a-glance calendar blotter underneath the stacks of paperwork. Show number 10021 aired on Wednesday night, exactly three weeks ago. Nothing remarkable about that particular episode that I knew of.

This was indeed a mystery. Why had it been worth a couple thousand dollars to fix two words?

H
olly, where are all those scuffed-up
Food Freak
script pages you were going to list on eBay? You didn’t sell them yet?”

“Mad?” Holly’s voice sounded puzzled on the phone. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Artie’s office,” I said, trying to stay calm. “Listen, do you still have any of them?”

“Sure. I have all of them.”

“That’s great! Where are they?”

“I hate to tell you.”

“Holly, we don’t have time. I need some quick answers.”

Over the phone, I could hear Holly clearing her throat. “Look, we haven’t talked much this past week. You’ve been working on
Freak
all the time and I’ve been…well, I’ve been busy getting back together with Donald.”

I tried to contain my urge to scream. “Holly. Where are the scripts?”

“They’ve been in the backseat of my car all week.”

“What?”

“I haven’t been home yet.”

“You haven’t…Okay, look, never mind. You’re
still here, right? On the lot, in the tent kitchen, right?”

“Not exactly. I’m nearer the greenroom.”

It figured. That’s where J.Lo and Tobey Maguire would be hanging out when they finished with makeup.

“Where is your car parked? I need to see the scripts now.”

“Well, the thing is, we needed to use my car to help carry junk over to the studio for the party. So I unloaded that huge pile of scripts a few hours ago.”

“Okay, Holly. Give it to me all at once. Where the hell are the scripts?”

“I stashed them in that room next to your office. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“You put them in the hidden room?” I think my voice squeaked. “That’s just downstairs. That’s brilliant. Look, can you meet me there? I may need help.”

“Sure. Wes has everything covered out in the tent. And Tobey isn’t out of wardrobe yet. But I think they are calling places on the stage. I just saw Emily Baker walk by and I nearly fainted. These contestants are so cool.”

“Meet me as soon as you can.”

“Rightio,” Holly said.

I took the bottles of seltzer, and I grabbed the damp invoice, too, and charged my way out of Artie’s office, remembering to shut the door and lock it. Down on the floor below, the hallway was deserted. All the production staff were surely down at the soundstage by this time, keyed up and ready to go into action. At the door of Tim Stock’s office, on a hunch I tried Artie’s key in the door. It worked. Apparently all the big bosses got the master key. Handy. It saved me the time of scrounging for my key ring. I shot across Tim’s
empty library/office, wasting no time. The job of pushing aside the large rose sofa was made more difficult because it sat on the carpet, but in a minute I had managed to shove it far enough away from the bookcases that I could open the hidden door.

The sound of the knock startled me. Being alone in Tim’s office was not my favorite thing. Holly was at the door. Of course. And I was happy to get her inside and have her company as well as her help.

“What are you doing?” she asked. She had long ago shed the magenta-colored ski parka and was dressed in a long, slinky, black-knit dress with a V neckline that plunged far south of her bosom, revealing her white skin and the bone structure of her midchest. She was model tall and model thin, and on certain days, like when she expected to bump into young Hollywood dishes like Tobey Maguire, Holly worked it.

“Nice dress,” I said, as the two of us entered the darkened bedroom next door. “New?”

“Donald didn’t want me to go home, so he took me shopping, instead. Please don’t tell me I’m bad.”

I located the pull chain for the light easily this time. In the sudden brightness, I found myself staring at stacks of scripts, some bound, but many pages loose.

“Look,” I said, “I want to find the bumper copy for show number 10021.”

“Okay,” Holly agreed. She was always eager to jump into any job. “What does a copy of a bumper look like?”

“It will just look like any other page here. Only the show number is typed in the upper-right corner on each script. The bumper copy is just the words the announcer reads before the commercial.”

“Hey, that’s cute,” Holly said. “So I guess it would be
a page like this one?” She had quickly flipped through the bound script on the top of the pile and held out the first page that showed a speech for Randy East.

“Yes. Only this section is the contestant intros. And this script,” I said, checking the show number, “is show number 10023.” But I flipped further ahead to show Holly what the bumper recipes looked like. “See here?” I read it to her aloud:

“ ‘RANDY EAST: Don’t go to Rome when you have a craving for Caesar! Salad, that is! Just jot down this grocery list:

1 anchovy

2 heads of fresh romaine

2 cups of extra-virgin olive oil

2 cups of grated Parmesan cheese

6 squeezed lemons

“ ‘You can use an extra one, but you don’t have to buy a lemon grove!’ ”

“If you ask me, that recipe sucks,” Holly said flatly. “Who uses two cups of Parmesan in a recipe that small? And what’s with the lemons?”

“Holly!” I felt dizzy, the words swimming in front of my eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Read down the list of ingredients. Just the numbers.”

“One-two-two-two-six. What is that?”

“And the last two words in his speech?”

She looked it over again and read, “…lemon grove.” Holly looked up at me then, puzzled. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

“One-two-two-two-six Lemon Grove is Tim Stock’s address.”

“Oh my God!”

“And what was the airdate of show number 10023?” I asked her, my voice dropping out at the end.

Holly turned back to the cardboard cover. “Last week. It was the show that aired last Wednesday night.”

“And that was the night…”

Holly just stared at me.

“Holly, find show number 10021.”

The two of us attacked the pile. One by one, we discarded scripts from other weeks. When we had gotten down to the bottom of the stack of bound scripts, Holly cried, “Eureka!” In her hand was a slightly disheveled copy of the script for show number 10021. Its cover was missing, and so, by the looks of it, were several pages. I took it from her and raced through it. The page that held the bumper copy was missing.

“What does it mean?” she asked, disappointed.

“Help me go through these pages that have been torn out of the scripts,” I said, resigned. “I don’t think we’ll find the page we want. I am beginning to suspect that page was torn out of its script for a reason. And maybe that reason was worth someone breaking into Tim’s office in the first place.”

“You mean,” Holly said, thinking it all through, “somebody trashed that office just to cover up the fact that they ripped off one page from an old script?”

“I do. Something in that script had to be covered up, Holly. A show that watches every penny in its budget does not just frivolously shell out two grand to make a minor correction. I’ve got to see that recipe in the bumper. Tell you what. We can make it simpler. Greta
told me she had backup copies of all the old scripts in her office.”

“But it’s locked and Greta’s not here,” Holly said, biting her lip. “It’ll take time, but maybe we could try to track her down.”

I just couldn’t wait. We were finally going to get some answers. All along, we’d been running into codes, like the code in the magazine that led us to the cookbooks where Tim Stock’s cash was hidden. And now it turned out that the mangled recipes might be some sort of code, too. “We can’t waste any more time,” I said to Holly.

“What else can we do?” she asked, ready to leap into action by my side.

And then I showed her Artie’s master key.

A
neat row of twenty-four scripts, each about thirty pages thick, each covered in pastel card stock, each fastened with brass brads, filled one shelf next to Greta Greene’s desk. Holly and I had let ourselves into the quiet office without any trouble. It was five minutes before six o’clock. Five minutes to air. Down at the stage, the crew and contestants would be in their places. In the booth, the small control room, the director was by now at his seat in front of a bank of monitor screens, ready to call the show. The show’s producers would be sitting in the row behind, watching the monitors, too, hoping for the best. Susan was sitting by the director’s elbow, counting down the time until the final
Food Freak
episode would begin. It was her responsibility to make sure the live production stayed on time throughout its allotted hour. With everyone already in the booth or on the stage floor, the entire floor of production offices was empty.

I flipped on the television set on Greta’s desk. The KTLA studio had their own private video feed. They picked up the live shots from each of the working soundstages and broadcast it in-house to all of the production offices on the lot. Sitting in your office, you
could watch any of the shows that were taping at the facility in real time. I flipped a few channels, looking for the live feed from the
Food Freak
set. The first noncommercial station I came to displayed the slate for
Let’s Make a Deal.
According to the schedule,
Deal
was on soundstage 2, but wouldn’t begin taping until seven. I flipped a few more channels and found the video feed from soundstage 9. Because
Food Freak
had yet to begin taping, what we saw was a master shot of the stage from an untended camera that revealed the crew’s last-minute activities. Randy East could be seen shuffling through his hand cards at his podium. Chef Howie walked over to the contestants and began chatting to help ease their nerves. Because his mike was live, we could hear him as they made small talk.

“Maddie,” Holly said, “here it is. Show number 10021. Randy East’s part. The recipe is for a Swiss Cheese Omelet.”

I met her at the bookcase, where she had the script open, and read:

“ ‘You’ll need…

1 pound of Swiss cheese, grated

3 large eggs

1 tablespoon of butter

“ ‘This will taste as good the first time you make it as the twenty-first!’”

I stopped reading and shook my head.

Holly said, “ ‘One pound of Swiss cheese’? Get real.”

I read down the numbers and the last words in the piece. “One-three-one twenty-first.”

“Is that an address?” she asked.

I checked the invoice from Eagle Post. The words that had been edited out were “1 pound.” The words that were looped in were “2 ounces.”

“That’s it,” I said. “The recipe was fixed in post. Before they aired that show, someone had made the decision to change the quantity of Swiss to two ounces.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you there. That would be more sensible, wouldn’t it? To use two ounces of cheese?”

“Yes.” I looked at the invoice again. At the bottom was a notation that explained who at the production company had placed the rush order. In that blank were typed the initials “T.S.” I pointed it out to Holly.

“So you mean Tim Stock is the one who ordered the correction?”

“I think he did. And instead of the recipe code spelling out 131 Twenty-first, it must have been broadcast as 231 Twenty-first.”

“But what does it mean?”

I put up a finger. “
Food Freak
Revenge: The Final Food Fight” had just begun taping. The opening music picked up and we both turned to watch. We heard the familiar raucous version of “Who Let the Chefs Out?” and then the full, hearty voice of Randy East. He was reading off the opening copy while we saw a fast-cut montage of different shots: contestants, the set, and Chef Howie. It was surreal to hear the words I had just proofread now being read live over the pulsing closeups. It was Randy’s talent to turn a card full of exclamation points and ellipses into something that sounded like spontaneous excitement.

I used my cell phone to call Honnett’s cell phone, relieved
when he answered his after the first ring. “I’ve got a strange question,” I said, without waiting for a greeting. “Does the address 231 Twenty-first Street mean anything?”

There was a pause so long on the other end of the phone, I wondered if we had become disconnected. In the silence, Randy East’s voice came booming from the office television monitor. He was introducing “
Spider-man
’s star arachnid.” I watched Tobey Maguire waving from the judges’ platform as the awkward wording was read aloud. That language should have been fixed.

“Honnett?” I said into the phone, impatient, worried.

“231 Twenty-first Street,” he said slowly, “is the Burbank address of our female shooting victim three weeks ago. The physical therapist. Where’d you come up with that?”

“Look,” I said, “I think something bizarre has been going on at
Food Freak.
We have to do something fast. Our final show has just this minute started taping. It’s going out live to the East Coast. Anyone here in L.A. could be watching it right now if they have the satellite.”

“Calm down, Maddie. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I think Tim Stock tried to correct a mistake on a recipe that was read on the show that aired three weeks ago, the night the physical therapist was killed. I think he accidentally altered the code. The address was supposed to be 131 Twenty-first Street, but Tim made it
2
31.”

I told him the rest. It took awhile. Last week the recipe on the air had been a code for Tim’s address. And a death occurred at that address, too. I read Honnett the code addresses from the last few weeks of
shows as Holly kept handing me the open scripts she was sorting through. “It’s your Wednesday night string of homicides.
Food Freak
is the king of Wednesday night. I’m pretty sure this show has been broadcasting a secret message that has sent contract killers out on the streets of Los Angeles.”

“Do you hear what you are saying?” Honnett asked. “You’re saying your game show is killing people.”

“I told you it was bizarre,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “But it all makes sense.”

Honnett wasn’t as convinced as I was, but he would send a police officer out immediately, to guard all the scripts. He’d get a search warrant, too, but that would take longer. He told me to stay with Holly.

I was just about to disconnect, but on the office monitor, the first segment of the show was concluding. A beautiful shot of Chef Howie preparing guacamole appeared on the screen. Randy East’s voice could be heard over the shot as he read the bumper copy that led into the first commercial break:

“‘Want to take a smooth trip south of the border? Say olé! with a zesty guacamole dip. The ingredients are simple, and so are the steps.

“ ‘Start with:

3 ripe avocados

1 diced vine-ripe tomato

4 small onions, minced

2 tablespoons of chopped fresh cilantro

“‘Mash and stir it all together…’”

The recipe I had fixed at the very last minute had been un-fixed. As Randy East read off the ingredients, I spoke quickly into the phone. “Wait a second,
Chuck. Someone has to get over to 3142 San Gabriel. I’m not sure what part of the city that is, but that’s the code address in tonight’s recipe. They should get there fast. Someone in that house is not safe.”

I pressed the End button on my cell phone and turned to Holly. “We’re sticking together. Honnett’s orders.”

“Did he say we have to stay right here?”

“No. Let’s go to the soundstage. This is my big break in show business, damnit, and if the cops are coming to shut this place down, I better make the most of being a glamorous TV writer while I still have the chance.”

“Wow,” Holly said, following me out of Greta’s office. “When they say ‘fifteen minutes of fame,’ they aren’t just joking around, are they?”

We walked across the lot together, Holly in her high-heeled sandals and long black dress, and me. I had changed earlier into my best new clothes, a lowslung olive-colored skirt and a short gauzy white top that left a tiny gap of skin exposed at the waistline when I raised my arms. Holly looked at me once again as we walked up to the
Food Freak
soundstage. “You have become bold, Maddie,” she said approvingly. “It’s the new Mad Bean.”

“Stop it,” I said, shushing her. The red light outside the heavy door of the soundstage began to pulsate, on and off. It warned that the show inside was taping and all needed to be extra quiet.

“Mad Goes Hollywood,” she whispered in my ear, to annoy me. It worked.

We walked behind the set as quietly as possible, careful to step over cables on the floor, until we came to the back of the audience risers. Onstage, the Baker sisters were just answering their final question.

Chef Howie was standing next to the trio, reading expertly from his cue card, “Okay, we’re playing ‘Bad Recipes’! For the final point, and the round, remember you must replace the incorrect words in the following culinary statement. Just correct this silly recipe:
‘Bullwinkle J.
mousse is made with eggs, butter, sugar, and cocoa.’” As Chef Howie read the words, they appeared in graphics on the lower portion of the screen on a large monitor that faced the audience.

Marley Baker looked at Sydney. Sydney said, “Chocolate?”

“Yes!” Chef Howie said, beaming. “
Chocolate
mousse is made with eggs, butter, sugar, and cocoa! You did it! You won the round!”

Holly and I stood to the side of the audience risers and noticed the “Applause” sign flash on. We saw Randy East, his full face smiling at the audience, cheering at us all, getting the audience to give it some more oomph! Without thinking, Holly and I began to applaud. Over the noise, I spoke into Holly’s ear. “I wrote that question,” I said.

“Awesome,” she replied.

Chef Howie waited for the cheers to die down and turned to the contestants on the set. “Who are the hottest chefs competing here tonight? We’ll find out in just a moment, when the Baker sisters take on Bruce and Belinda Holtz in the showdown of the year…Don’t you dare leave your seats, friends!”

The show took a two-minute break for commercials, and the stagehands and gaffers began to attack the set. The contestants were moved into the Kitchen Arena section where they would do their thing, back to back.

“So can you tell me what you think?” Holly whispered.

“I’m not sure. Someone has deliberately planted those bumper recipes in the scripts to communicate a code over the air. That code has been addresses, Hol. I’m worried. Those addresses may connect to a series of homicides.”

“Who would do something like that?”

I shook my head. “Only a few people had the influence with this show to get those recipes on the air.”

“Like the head writer, Tim Stock?” she asked.

“Yes. But if Tim was behind the address code, why did he order that expensive looping session? I’m afraid, Holly, that by correcting that one recipe, some innocent woman in Burbank died.”

“That’s horrible.” Holly looked ill.

“I know. And something else is bothering me. The very next week after Tim made the change in the recipe, he went into hiding. It seems like whoever is behind these deaths must have discovered what Tim had done.”

“You think they threatened him and he ran?”

“Maybe Tim discovered what those recipes really meant. He could have noticed the Burbank woman’s address in the newspaper, and started to figure it out. This code is not that sophisticated. Anyone who can cook would recognize that the quantities of those ingredients don’t make sense. The fact that no one on the show stopped them from getting aired is the key here. I bet Tim freaked when he finally figured out the truth. Those recipes meant death. Maybe the people behind these killings decided Tim knew too much and had to be eliminated.”

“So they put out a contract for Tim,” Holly said,
worried, “by putting Tim’s own address in the show.”

I kept thinking it over. Who could be behind such a string of killings, anyway? Honnett had told me the deaths looked like professional hits, but they didn’t share the same methods, which made it much harder to prove they were linked. What the deaths had in common was the night of the week they occurred, the night
Food Freak
aired, and the suggestion that most of the victims had disputes with a certain drug gang. Perhaps the address going out on network television each week was like some macabre job posting. Any hitman out there could make a kill and pick up some money.

“It can’t be true. We gotta be missing something,” Holly said, worried. “Why would anyone on this show want to be involved with this? These people are game-show people.”

I remembered that Susan had said much the same thing. Game-show people might be guilty of the sort of infractions that could get them pulled over to the side of the road by the culture police, but they were hardly organized criminals.

In front of us, the large letters spelling “Applause” lit up. The audience sitting on risers next to us began to yell and clap. The televised competition was about to resume.

Chef Howie told the contestants that the recipe they would have to prepare for the evening was a spicy and rich “Mumbo Gumbo.”

Holly turned to me and grinned. “That’s yours, isn’t it? That recipe? Oh, Mad, you are famous now.”

So this was fame.