Chapter 4

ABOUT half an hour later, Pete pulled the limo into the circular driveway in front of the Glenham Bars Inn, a gorgeous white clapboard hotel straight out of the Gilded Age. Tilda had been part of an extremely fancy wedding there a few years before, and knew the basic layout. The inn itself was the biggest building, and contained the dining room, bar, and a selection of rooms ranging from deluxe to more deluxe to obscenely deluxe. It was situated high enough up that there was a breathtaking view of the Atlantic Ocean from the veranda and dining room. Shoreline Road, which naturally enough paralleled the shore, ran in front of it, and across the road were more of the inn’s facilities: the tennis courts and shop, boathouse, and pool, which was usually much nicer to swim in than the ocean itself. In case guests preferred more privacy or space than the main building provided, there were two dozen or more cottages clustered behind the Inn and along Shoreline, on both sides of the road.

The place reeked of old New England money, the kind of people for whom summer was a verb instead of a noun. Tilda had shared a cottage with four other bridesmaids for that wedding, and had been relieved that she hadn’t had to pay for it herself. Even a fifth of the cost would have devastated her budget for months afterward.

As the limo slowed smoothly to a stop, Tilda made a quick check to make sure that she’d gathered all her stuff, so she didn’t see what John Laryea was seeing. All she knew was that the previously genial star had suddenly burst into a string of profanities.

When she looked out the window, it was all she could do to keep from laughing. Standing on the veranda, waving merrily, was a neon green fuzzy alien with a rotund tummy, big googly eyes, and three shaky antennae.

“What the hell is that?” Joni asked.

“It’s Posit, the wisecracking Twizzle from The Blastoffs,” Tilda explained. The wisecracks hadn’t been particularly good ones, but certainly funny enough for the demographic at which the show was aimed.

“I am not going out there!” Laryea said.

“Dom, get rid of him!” Edwina said, and though Dom looked as if there were nothing he’d less rather do, he climbed out of the limo, pulled up his khakis, and went into battle. Tilda could see that it must have been nearly impossible for Dom to get tough with a guy in a green fur suit. In fact, she didn’t think a color change would have helped—any furry suit would have made it hard to get macho. At any rate, the discussion stretched into minutes.

“Why is he still here?” Laryea asked angrily.

“I think he’s hoping for a photo op with his former costar,” Tilda said, since there was a photographer snapping photos of Dom and Posit.

“Hell, no!”

Dom seemed to be making some progress. Posit removed his head. Or rather, the person inside removed the big fur headpiece, revealing a somewhat wilted-looking older man with bright blue eyes and a cherubic grin.

“That’s not …” Pete started to say.

“I know, technically, it’s not Posit,” Tilda said. “After The Blastoffs went off the air, Hugh Wilder there got hired to host a kids’ cartoon show here on the Cape. He wanted to use the Posit character, but the studio’s lawyers objected, so he altered the costume just enough to keep from violating the copyright or trademark or whatever.” As Tilda recalled, Posit had two antennae while Quasit had three, and Quasit was a brighter green and didn’t wear a shiny vest like Posit. Plus Wilder got rid of the tail because it was a pain to work with. “He doesn’t do the cartoon show anymore, but he’s still enough of a public figure to show up at parades and kids’ festivals around here.”

“How do you know this?” Nick asked.

“I interviewed Wilder a couple of years ago. I was doing a piece on former cartoon show hosts: Bozo the Clown from Boston, Sonic Man from North Carolina, and of course, Posit. Or Quasit. He’s a sweet old guy, really.”

“I don’t care if he’s Mother Teresa—I want him out of here!” Laryea snapped.

Dom wasn’t having any luck, and Tilda could hear Joni and Edwina muttering about the bad press resulting if Laryea snubbed Posit/Quasit or, worse still, indulged in a star-power temper tantrum. Though Tilda didn’t particularly care if Laryea made an ass of himself publicly, she did care about Dom getting into trouble. And of course, doing a pair of powerful moviemakers a favor could only help an entertainment reporter.

“I’ve got an idea,” Tilda said, “but it’ll mean a slight bit of pretense.”

“Lie through your teeth if you have to, just keep him away from me,” Laryea said.

“Nick, is there a back door into the hotel?”

He nodded.

“Good. I’m going to get out of the limo in a minute, and when I do, drive around to the back and take Mr. Laryea in that way.”

“Won’t Posit just follow us?” Nick asked.

“I think I can distract him.”

She opened the door just enough to slip out, and as soon as she slammed the door behind her, the limo took off.

As Nick had predicted, Posit started down the stairs and toward the limo.

“Mr. Wilder!” Tilda said cheerily. “Remember me? Tilda Harper.” She stuck out her hand, which he automatically took to shake. “I am so glad I ran into you. I had a computer meltdown a few months ago, and lost your contact information, and I wasn’t sure how to get in touch with you to arrange an interview.”

Interview was the magic word. Unsurprisingly for a man who routinely ran around in a fur alien suit, Wilder liked nothing better than to meet with the press. He straightened up and gave her a big smile. “An interview with me? About my work with sick children?”

“That might be a good sidebar, but I was really hoping to talk to you about your work on The Blastoffs. Maybe a bit about what John Laryea was like to work with as a kid?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to talk with both of us at the same time?” he said, looking in the direction the limo had gone.

“I wanted to get the background from you first.” She lowered her voice. “Besides, John is feeling a bit under the weather. He’s not sure if it’s a stomach bug or something they fed him on the plane, and he would have come out to see you himself, but his assistant Foster insisted he go get some rest. I don’t have to tell you what a mess it would be if production was slowed up by illness. When we spoke before, didn’t you mention something about the time both of the Blastoff brothers got chicken pox right before filming?” He had, in fact, told her about it in excruciating detail, pox-by-pox, but he couldn’t wait to tell her again. They found a couple of wicker chairs on the veranda to sit on, and once Tilda pulled out her notebook and tape recorder, he happily launched into it.

In the meantime, Dom scooted into the inn and the bored photographer took a few shots before trudging away.

Unfortunately for Tilda, the interview with Wilder was even less interesting than the one with Laryea had been.

After the chicken pox story, he started gushing. “It was like a family on that show, a big happy family. The boys were just amazing to work with, too. John had this spark in him from day one. You could see the greatness there.” And so on, and so on, and so on.

Not that Tilda had expected a lot of dirt about Laryea since Wilder wanted to play up his great friendship with the star, but she’d have been happy with something human. Surely Laryea must have flubbed a shot or played a prank on the director or tried to sneak a girl into his trailer or drank too much—anything that normal teenaged boys did. But according to Posit, it was like working with a real-life Brady Bunch, without the punch lines.

After forty-five minutes of rah-rahs, she figured she’d given Laryea plenty of time to make his escape, and was ready to wind it up. She let Wilder finish the story about Laryea’s amazingly generous presents for the crew members when the show wrapped, then said, “This has been great. I really appreciate your candor, Mr. Wilder.”

“Call me Hugh!” he said. “Or Quasit.” He looked around and winked conspiratorially. “If the lawyers aren’t listening, you can even call me Posit.”

“You bet.”

“Did you want to get some pictures?”

“Absolutely,” she lied, and took more shots of him than she would ever want, with and without the Quasit head. Then she accepted the hug Wilder was determined to give her.

“Maybe I should go inside and check in on Johnny,” Wilder said.

“I got the idea he was going to go straight to bed, and keep quiet for the rest of the evening. He’s got some prep work for tomorrow.”

“That’s Johnny,” Wilder said fondly. “Always a professional. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

He headed out to the parking lot while Tilda packed her notebook and other odds and ends into the black leather messenger bag she used to carry far too much stuff. Then she pulled out her phone to make a quick e-mail check, and replied to a couple of messages.

She was about to go inside when she saw that Wilder was still in the parking lot, talking to somebody. She moved close enough to recognize the other person as Pete, the limo driver.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she murmured to herself, and on a whim, snapped a couple of pictures of the two men. Of course, if Pete really was Spencer Marshall, it made all kinds of sense. But the fact that he’d waited for Wilder out there rather than joining them on the veranda made for a bit of a mystery, and an intriguing one at that.