Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(42)

Wellstone shook his head sympathetically. She was going to be a gold mine of information on Betts and Moller.

At that moment, Daisy perked up. “Which reminds me!”

“What is it?”

“How foolish of me to forget! Heavens, my memory isn’t what it used to be.” Daisy stood up and walked out of the parlor. A moment later, with a swish of pantyhose, she returned.

“I was there, in the Montgomerie House…‘on the set,’ as you say,” she told him as she sat down again. “I had just been interrupted by Mr. Betts. I was standing in the background—rather stunned, I might say—when I recalled what you said about getting a look behind the scenes.”

“That’s right,” Wellstone replied.

“I was able to get some pictures.”

“What?” Wellstone asked. This was far better than he’d expected. He had almost asked her to take a few clandestine photos, but figured it was too risky. As it turned out, she’d taken the initiative herself.

“My phone has a camera, of course.” She pulled out a late-model cell phone and showed it to him. She tried to turn it on for several seconds before realizing she was holding it upside down. Rotating it, she pressed the screen here and there, until at last she gave a little chirp of triumph.

“You said you wanted information, so I took some pictures while pretending to send emails. There!” she said, handing him the phone.

Wellstone took the phone. It showed a black screen. He swiped his finger across it, revealing a blurred, dark image. And another.

“I’m not really all that good with it yet,” Daisy said apologetically.

Wellstone swiped his way through a dozen more photos blurred by movement and out of focus. Then he came to a set where the phone, apparently, had self-adjusted for the environment. He saw a darkened corridor, two cameramen, that charlatan Betts…and some kind of cloth on the floor, covered with a bizarre array of tools and other objects. Beside it was something he was very familiar with, given his years in and out of television studios: a hard case with foam cutouts of the kind photographers and sound engineers used to protect their gear. When he zoomed in on it, he could see more items still inside the foam cradles: a jagged, lightning-shaped piece of silver; a metering device of some kind; a large box camera; a battered cross; an oscilloscope; and a piece of smoked glass.

These were Moller’s phony “tools.”

“I took pictures of his black suitcase with his equipment,” Daisy said. “Moller wouldn’t let them film inside of the case—only the equipment itself, only when it was being used.”

Wellstone suddenly realized he was gripping the phone so hard it hurt. “Daisy,” he said, “I believe you’ve struck gold.”

The elderly matron looked at him as if he’d just given her a pearl necklace. “Really?”

“Really. Twenty-four-karat gold. These photos of the equipment will be very useful.” He paused.

The memory of his lunchtime humiliation was still all too fresh—and, he realized, it had provided him with the incentive he required to investigate and write those chapters about Betts and his phony setup after all. No way was he returning to Boston until he had the goods on that mountebank Betts.

He was going to blow up those photos and study every little thing in that case, because he was sure that in there somewhere must be the key to exposing the quack. That large camera nestled in the suitcase, for example—he’d seen pictures of Moller wielding it in the past. “Would you be willing to go back to the set again?”

Her grateful look became a little worried. “But…why would I say I’m there?”

“Offer your services again, but not on camera—just to be a help, you know, with the research. You know so much. And of course you have an in with the local people that they don’t have. I’m sure you can make a good argument why you should continue helping them. Now that they’ve finished with the Montgomerie House, did they talk about what they were going to do next?”

“They mentioned shooting scenes involving the Savannah Vampire.”

“Perfect! Once I’ve made the preparations, I’ll call.” He paused. “You know, if you’re any more helpful to me, I may just have to name you coauthor.”

She blushed.

He waved the phone at her. “Would you mind if I sent these photos over to my phone?”

“Not at all,” she said, standing. “And might I perhaps warm up your tea?”

For a moment, Wellstone didn’t understand. Then he saw Daisy had walked over to a sideboard and was cradling a bottle of Woodford Reserve.

“Why, thank you, Daisy,” he said, taking his own phone out of his pocket and sitting back in his armchair. “I’d like that. I’d like that very much.”





28



TOBY MANNING SHIMMIED UP the wrought iron fence and tried to swing his leg over the spikes, but his pants got hung up and he fell to the ground on the far side with a loud ripping sound. He lay there, a little shaken but otherwise unharmed, as his pal Brock Custis looked on, laughing uproariously.

“You bust ass like that again,” Brock said, “and half of the dead here are going to rise up and give you the finger.”

“Help me up, fagmeat,” Toby said.