“Please, call me Mattie. And you’ve got to help him, Nancy! It’s a matter of life and death!”
“You know, you’re a lot more upset than he is, Mattie,” Kay put in. “As far as I can tell, he loves the attention, no matter how negative it is.”
Nancy was puzzled. “If you tell me what’s going on, maybe I could give you a few suggestions,” she offered. After all, she told herself, giving advice was different from actually getting involved.
“Didn’t Eloise tell you?” Mattie asked frantically, her luminous eyes filling with tears. “Someone is trying to kill Rick!”
“Don’t cry,” Kay ordered, dabbing Mattie’s eyes with a tissue. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”
“Sorry. It’s just so upsetting.”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” Nancy said, taking an empty chair next to Mattie.
“It began with the chocolate,” Mattie explained, leaning forward. Kay chased after her face with a powder puff. “A box of it came in with the rest of the fan mail one day. Rick is a maniac for chocolate, so he opened the box and ate one right away. It was so bitter that for a minute he thought he’d been poisoned. After a while, though, when he didn’t keel over, he figured it was just a practical joke. We all did. But then a letter arrived. It said something like, ‘Scared you, didn’t I? Good, because this was just a dress rehearsal.’ About two days later, a watch came in the mail. It was set at five to midnight, and there was a note attached that said, ‘Your time’s running out.’ You see? Somebody is trying to kill him!”
Mattie was practically standing up in her chair. Kay gently pushed her back down and began working on her eyes. “Take it easy, hon,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Maybe this is a stupid question,” Nancy ventured, “but has anybody called the police?”
Kay laughed. “If we called the police every time we got a nasty letter around here, we’d be calling them every day! You should see some of the fan mail.”
Mattie wheeled around in her chair. “But this is different! These aren’t just nasty letters, they’re real threats! The trouble is, nobody is taking them seriously!”
“Not even Rick?” Nancy asked.
“Especially not Rick,” Mattie said huffily. “He thinks nothing will ever hurt him. As far as he’s concerned, the whole thing is the work of a single loony fan out for kicks. I’m the only one who’s really worried, and that’s why I need your help.”
“She’ll help you, won’t you, Nancy?” Bess said, not really asking the question. “We’ll stay here as long as it takes!”
Nancy smiled wryly. Bess would have promised anything if it meant she could spend more time with her idols.
“But, Bess,” she said, protesting. “We have a lot of sightseeing planned, and—”
Just then, the door flew open and Rick Arlen burst in. Bess gasped. He really was even more gorgeous in person. A lock of blond hair had fallen over his forehead, and he impatiently brushed it away. He was holding up a black-and-white glossy photograph of himself. The photo had been scratched almost beyond recognition.
“Mattie,” he said, thrusting the picture into her hands, “it’s happened again! Look at this!”
Mattie looked at the photo, and at the message scrawled beneath it. “ ‘If you won’t be mine, you won’t be anybody’s,’ ” she read. She looked up at Nancy. “You see what I mean?”
“At least it’s an old picture,” Rick said, trying to make a joke. “It’s not even very good, actually.”
Bess was standing, absolutely frozen, staring moronically at Rick. Noticing her obvious interest, Mattie hastily introduced the girls to Rick, but it was clear that his mind was on other things. He hardly noticed them.
“Whoever did this has some nerve,” he was saying. “Imagine, tearing up my face like that.”
“Please, Rick,” Mattie begged, “if you won’t call the police, will you at least tell security about this?”
“Come on, now,” he said, waving away her concern. “What are they going to do about it? Shake their heads and wring their hands, that’s what. Anyhow, it’s probably just old man Pappas trying to scare me.”