Chapter Twenty-One —"Down at the Dump"
Previously: Lily believes she has solved the Mystery and has convinced almost everybody, including Derek Frye, that Ethan is responsible for the Vanishings. Kendall and Ryan have gone after Zach, who, unaware of Lily's theory, is meeting Ethan at the Pine Valley Dump, where he discovers that a Big Black Building has sprung up where no Big Black Building ever was. Ethan invites him into the building, but Zach hesitates until Erica calls out to him. When Kendall and Ryan get there, they can hear music and laughter coming from the mysterious, ominous building and Kendall wonders how there could be a party going on there of all places?
Tad felt awash in misgivings. Something did not fit. He didn't care what his parents and Opal and everybody else thought. He sensed danger.
"Have another drink," Brooke urged, pressing a glass of champagne into his hand. "And have you tried the crab puffs? To die for!"
"We're in trouble, Brooke," he confided to her. "All of us."
"You don't think Ethan's plan will work?" she asked him, draining her glass.
"I don't think we know what Ethan's plan is," Tad suggested darkly.
"Of course we do!" Palmer begged to differ, overhearing the exchange. "Thanks to Ethan, the Powers That Be will realize they have no Pine Valley without us. Thanks to Ethan, all of us will be given worthwhile storylines!" He picked up a cocktail weiner from the buffet table and popped it in his mouth. "Thanks to Ethan, we're all back on the Front Burner. Or we soon will be!"
"Some of us were never off the Front Burner," Adam said sweetly.
They all were standing by one or another of the nine buffet tables that lined the walls of the Grand Ballroom of the Big Black Building, filling and refilling their plates despite the time, which was a little after 3:00 a.m. By then the chloroform Ethan had used to drug them had long since worn off, and most of their appetites were fully restored. This was the first meal many of them had since breakfast the day before.
But Tad wasn't eating.
"He drugged us," he reminded whoever was in earshot. "Doesn't that set off a few alarms for anybody?"
"Martin, you're always such a big baby," David Hayward observed distastefully, reaching over him to scoop up some caviar. "Doesn't your constant whining ever bore you?"
"Shut up, David," Liza advised. "And don't take all the caviar! Colby, grab some caviar before it disappears like we did!"
"Dahling, which one is Colby?" Myrtle asked Julia.
"Tall blonde 15-year old," Livia answered, after Julia shrugged.
"Just what AMC needs," Simone said mournfully. "Another blonde."
"I can remember her before she was SORASED," Myrtle reminisced. "Lovely child. Adam, have you introduced yourself to her?"
Adam grunted. "There'll be time enough for that if and when she's back on the Show."
"What does SORAS mean?" Colby whispered to Liza.
"Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome," everybody replied in unison.
"Tad has a point, you know," Aidan told them, changing the subject back to their situation. "Ethan could have clued us in immediately about his scheme to make the Powers That Be appreciate us."
"He told us once he got us here," Stuart reminded them.
"That's true," Marian affirmed. "I remember when I came to, stopped throwing up and started asking questions, he was extremely forthcoming."
"Yeah," Tad agreed. "Why wasn't he extremely forthcoming before he abducted us?"
"Simple," Adam replied. "We wouldn't have willingly gone with him. Well, I wouldn't have willingly gone with him."
"That's because you still have a storyline, you pompous fraud," Palmer spat at him. "But don't think that's because you're so revered and treasured. It's because of your son! You're nothing but a tag-along to JR's storyline!"
"Palmer, prepare to die," Adam said calmly, lunging for his longtime rival's throat.
"Stop it, you two old buzzards," Opal ordered. "Look Tad, given my non-existent presence on the Show, I am not about to look a gift horse in the mouth." She sniffed. "And it looks like the gift horse's Daddy agrees with me!"
After Erica's urging, an uncertain Zach had followed Ethan into the Big Black Building. So there Zach stood in a lavishly decorated ballroom, complete with three massive chandeliers, a lacquered dance floor, nine buffet tables, four giant video monitors (all showing different "Bugs Bunny" cartoons) and every Beatles song ever recorded blaring from every wall (not at the same time, thankfully). He'd have been sure he was dreaming, except for the fact that Kendall wasn't there and Kendall was always in his dreams.
--
At that precise moment, as it happened, Kendall was outside of the Big Black Building, busily debating with Ryan their next course of action.
"Kendall, ring the bell. I'll crouch in the shadows and jump whoever opens the door. Hopefully, it will be Ethan."
"Why can't I crouch in the shadows while you ring the bell?" Kendall queried him. "Then I can jump whoever opens the door. Better yet, did you bring a gun with you? Give it to me and I'll shoot whoever opens the door."
Ryan remembered yet again why he was so in love with her. She was completely beautiful, completely brave and completely crazy.
"I didn't bring a gun, Kendall. This is Ethan we're talking about. I don't want to hurt him. I'll have to knock him out though. It's probably better if I knock him out than if you do. Mostly because I can do it and you can't."
"Sexist," she said, relenting all the same. With an only slightly shaking hand she rang the bell.
Greenlee opened the door.
--
"Why don't you go over to one of the buffets and mingle, Dad?" Ethan suggested, his smile too wide, his eyes too bright, not unlike a wolf about to devour its prey.
"I'm not hungry," Zach replied truthfully. "And those Pine Valley people and I have never really gotten on. What do you suppose they'd tell me if I asked them what they're doing here? What would they say about you, Son?"
Ethan had no doubts whatsoever on the subject. "They'd say because of me they're saving themselves. They'd say I'm a genius. They'd say I've revived their futures in Pine Valley."
"But they would be deluding themselves?" Zach guessed.
"And then some," Ethan granted.
"What are your plans for them?" Zach forced himself to ask.
"Lethal," Ethan answered at once. "And for you as well, Dad. The only difference is they will die quickly and you will die not so quickly. And, of course, I've arranged things so that the blame will fall squarely on your shoulders. Is that the door?"
As if on cue, all four monitors began playing the same cartoon. While Ethan joined Greenlee, who was opening the door, Zach made his way over to one of the buffet tables as four Bugs Bunnies asked four Elmer Fudds what was up. The Beatles were singing "All You Need Is Love", but at that point Zach had his doubts about that.
"Helluva party," he greeted Erica.
"Your son is doing a wonderful, selfless thing," Erica replied, buttering a sesame bagel. "If you were more like him, we might be friends one day."
"We're better off this way," he replied. "Have you eaten anything, Erica?"
"Not hungry," she answered, putting the bagel down. "That chloroform hit me hard."
"Good," he said absently, wondering how he could convince everybody else to stop feasting on what well might be toxic goodies.
"Feeling okay, Simone?" he asked her, noticing the dish of pistachio ice cream she was happily consuming, as Bugs continued to make life even more difficult for Yosemite Sam.
"I feel confused," she confessed. "Ethan's been ignoring me for hours. I can't understand why. We're supposed to be engaged! We should be picking out china patterns!"
"Indeed you should," Zach smiled. "Maybe you should save some room for breakfast," he advised, knocking the dish out of her hands at the same time Bugs knocked the rifle out of Sam's hands. "Oops. Sorry about that."
"I can't take him anywhere," Kendall confided to Simone, striding toward them from the door, her beautiful, unblinking eyes riveted on Zach's.
Greenlee was at her side, having led her into the ballroom. Ryan was nowhere in sight.
"Where's your boyfriend?" Zach asked Kendall quietly, dismissing the dream possibility, despite her arrival on the scene. "You remember. The one I asked to keep you safe?"
"I don't know what you mean," she smiled, looking around her. "Well, look's like the gang's all here. Including guess who? Greenlee! Zach, Greenlee's here! Look! Not Gina! None other than the Original Greenlee Duprés Lavery! How the hell have you been, Greens?"
"Dandy," Greenlee told her, grabbing a champagne glass and drifting away, leaving Kendall alone with Zach. "Who the hell is Gina?"
"Okay," Kendall said softly to Zach. "How much trouble are we in?"
"Heaps," Ethan answered, coming up behind her and putting a friendly, familiar arm around her waist. "Care for a truffle?"
"She's not hungry," Zach said at once.
"Actually, I am," Kendall corrected him, wriggling out of Ethan's grasp and reaching for a rice cake.
"No, you aren't," Zach corrected her, slapping it out of her hand.
"Dad thinks the food is chock full of arsenic or similar nasty substances," Ethan explained to an openly puzzled Kendall.
"Why would he think that?" she asked weakly.
"As usual, he's jumped to all the wrong conclusions and gotten it all wrong," Ethan complained. "When I told him I was going to murder everybody in the room, he decided I must be poisoning them."
"You're not?" Zach checked.
"I'm not," Ethan confirmed. "Poison is traceable. That's the reason I explicitly wrote in the Script that you were going to use gas to murder everybody."
"You're going to fill this room with carbon monoxide?" Kendall asked to make sure.
Ethan waved away that thought. "Too cliché. I'm using saran. Also a gas. Just as deadly. Probably deadlier."
"Where did you get --?" Zach began.
"On the internet, naturally" Ethan answered him. "I bet you're wondering how you're going to get blamed for it."
"You're going to blame Zach for murdering everyone?" Kendall gasped.
"What are you three chatting up a storm about?" Opal demanded to know, sidling up to them, as the Beatles started singing "Nowhere Man". "Honestly, you're thick as thieves! You planning a jewel heist as your next caper, Ethan? Can I be in on it?"
"You'll be in on my next caper, Opal," Ethan assured her in a honeyed tone. "Never fear!"
--
Ryan was reeling. He had been poised to jump whoever had come to the door. Both he and Kendall had assumed it would be Ethan. When it turned out to be Greenlee, the real Greenlee, he felt his world turn upside down and then inside out. How could it be? Greenlee had been recast! Hadn't she? If not, who was that girl living with him in his penthouse and helping him clean it up? Kendall had taken the shocking development in her stride and glided into the Big Black Building, leaving Ryan outside to recover and plan his next step. His next step was obvious. He had to get inside that building to find out what was going on. Weighing his options, he decided not to ring the bell.
"There's more than one way to skin a cat," he reasoned. "Not that I would ever consider doing such a thing to a cat. Why did I even think about that? Oh, because there's more than one way to get inside a building. All I have to do is figure out one of the other ways. That's all I have to do." And it was all he wanted to do because Greenlee was inside. Greenlee was inside!
--
Will Ethan's homicidal plans for the Veterans succeed? Can Zendall turn things around before things turn deadly? Will Derek and the Posse arrive in time to save the day? If Greenlee is still Greenlee, who the heck is Gina? What will Ryan do with TWO Greenlees? Please come back next time when these and other questions will remain unanswered. But not for long! Never fear! And never forget that your Review is the wind beneath my broken wings!