Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer by Lee Hollis (famous ebook reader .txt) 📗

Maybe.

Then something hit Poppy.

Like a fast-moving freight train.

She gasped out loud.

Matt, Violet, and Wyatt all stopped what they were doing.

“What? What is it?” Violet asked.

“It could be nothing, but . . .”

Matt leaned forward. “But what?”

“Ever since I found Danika in her trailer with that pillow over her face, I began recalling my time in Hollywood when I first became aware of the Pillow Talk Killer, and it was on the set of Jack Colt, actually on the day I believe I almost became his next victim . . . and, no it can’t be . . .”

“What?” Wyatt yelled.

“There was this young production assistant, and I could never remember his name, and so he told me it was Harold, and I made a promise to myself not to forget it.”

Matt’s mind clicked. “Hal. Do you think that PA was really Hal Greenwood?”

“He could be. I remember Harold was about the same height and build, it was just so long ago.”

Wyatt plucked a piece of paper out of the pile. “According to this old article from Entertainment Weekly back in 1996 when he was pushing one of his films for a Best Picture Oscar, Greenwood told the reporter that he began his career as a production assistant on a number of top-rated television shows including Dukes of Hazzard, the last season of Hart to Hart and, wait for it, Jack Colt, PI!”

“As I recall, one of the victims had played a bit role on The Dukes of Hazzard,” Poppy exclaimed.

“It’s got to be him!” Matt cried, clapping his hands together.

Wyatt jumped off his stool next to his computer and shuffled over to Poppy, who had sat down on the couch, her mind racing. “Do you have a photo of him when he was younger?”

Poppy shook her head. “No, why would I . . . ?” Then she shot back up to her feet. “Wait! I remember Rod Harper recently posted on Facebook an old cast and crew photo from the show on one of those Throwback Thursdays and so it’s possible he might be in that!”

Wyatt scrambled back to his computer and quickly brought up Rod’s Facebook page, scrolling down until he found the photo. He zoomed in close so Poppy could see everyone’s faces. It took a few moments, but then she pointed at a chubby young man with frizzy hair in the back row. “There! That’s him!”

“Hold on,” Wyatt said. He isolated Harold in the photo and blew it up to maximum size making sure not to blur it.

Violet put a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder. “Wyatt, honey, do you still have that computer program where you can age someone digitally—”

“Way ahead of you, Grandma,” Wyatt said.

Within seconds, he had aged the photo of Harold about thirty or forty years, and the result was an exact double of a contemporary Hal Greenwood.

“It’s definitely him,” Matt said before patting Wyatt on the back. “Good work, kid.”

“I remember him escorting me to the set and going on and on about the murders, the crime scenes, the beautiful victims,” Poppy recounted. “It was almost as if he was boasting about how much he knew.”

Violet trembled. “Do you think Hal Greenwood, or Harold Lawson may have been—?”

“The killer? He was so young and inexperienced. I didn’t take his interest in the murders seriously at all. And then I had that run-in with Don Carter on the same night Linda Appleton became the third victim, and I was so convinced it had to be him, and so were the police, I forgot all about Harold . . . or Hal.”

Poppy knew Hal could not have killed Danika Delgado. But what if the killer on the loose now in the present was a copycat, and Hal Greenwood had been the first Pillow Talk Killer back in the 1980s?

The thought was enough to make Poppy shudder.

Chapter 45

Poppy had noticed the black Mercedes parked across the street from her house when she pulled into her driveway, but didn’t think much of it until she was at her front door, slipping the key into the lock, and heard a rustling sound behind her. She spun around, hand raised in self-defense. There was no one there. She had to laugh at herself. What was with the hand? She had no karate training whatsoever. What was she going to do, crack a neck with it? That usually worked on Charlie’s Angels, which she watched religiously when she was a young actress just starting out in LA and stayed home most nights because she hardly knew anyone in town.

Poppy had started turning back toward the door when she heard the sound again, this time coming from her right. She whipped her head around to see a bulky man partially hidden in the shadows of her curve-leaf yucca plants, his feet trampling her carefully arranged colorful succulents.

He held out a chubby hand. “Don’t panic, I’m not here to hurt you.”

“That’s the second time I’ve heard that this week,” Poppy growled, recognizing the man’s voice. “You should not be here, Hal.” Her stomach flip-flopped. First Byron Savage. Now Hal Greenwood. Two people she did not trust or feel safe around. Especially Hal, given what had come to light about him only an hour earlier.

Hal stepped tentatively out of the shadows of the tall yucca plants. His appearance did nothing to calm Poppy’s heart, which was trying to pound its way out of her chest.

Hal looked wild-eyed, nervous, slightly unhinged.

“I just want to talk to you,” Hal tried to assure her.

“Then you should call the office and make an appointment, like you expect everyone else to do for you,” Poppy sniffed.

“I heard what you did, you and your associates, crashing the Cobra offices pretending to be some kind of cosmetics queen. That takes a lot of balls,” Hal said.

“You sound impressed.”

“Maybe a little,” Hal sneered.

“Now please, get back in your Mercedes and go home. I have no interest in talking to you here like this.”

Hal didn’t budge. “What kind