Stay Tuned for Murder (3 page)

So now what?
It looked like Chantel was way off target, and that meant it was time for a quick backpedal.

“Of course he had heart trouble! When he died, his heart
stopped
, didn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s true, but—”

“There are no buts about it. He died because his heart stopped. That means he had heart trouble. Period.” Chantel sat back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest, looking smug and vindicated. Chantel Carrington, the psychic cardiologist.

Dr. Oz, eat your heart out.

Vera Mae and I locked eyes as she gave a little shrug.
But doesn’t everyone die because their heart stops? Isn’t that the definition of dying?
I bet our thoughts were chugging along the same track, because she gave me a tiny eye roll.

Chantel took a quick peek at her notes. Better get off the details of Barney’s passing and jump into something else fast.

“Is he still there in the studio?” Sylvia asked.

“Yes, he is. In fact, Barney is telling me right this minute that you were his soul mate, the love of his life,” she said slowly into the mike. “But you already know that, right?” Her tone was as treacly as molasses.

Sylvia gave a tremulous laugh. Chantel was winning her back. “Oh, yes, I do know that.” A pause. “I hope he realizes it was his time. At least that’s what Dr. Harper said.”

Dr. Harper?
Chantel hesitated, looking blank for a moment. She opened her mouth like a guppy, snapped it shut, and then took a deep breath through her nose. “Barney knows that Dr. Harper made the right decision.” She spoke slowly, the way people do when they’re not quite sure of what they’re saying.

Had Barney been on life support? I wondered. Maybe Sylvia felt guilty about pulling the plug. I couldn’t think of any tactful way to ask, so I remained silent.

Luckily Chantel talks enough for both of us.

“Barney tells me his loved ones were all with him when he passed,” Chantel continued. “That must be a comfort to you.”

“But that’s impossible. Barney didn’t have any relatives. They all died years ago.”

Chantel blinked. She was off her game today. “Well, when I said they were
with
him, I meant they were
waiting
for him on the other side. You know, after he went into the white light and crossed the Rainbow Bridge.”

“Oh, I see what you mean.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vera Mae making a quack-quack motion with her hands, a sign that a commercial was coming up. Time to wrap this up till the next segment.

“I’m afraid we have to take a break now—,” I ventured.

“Wait!” Sylvia pleaded. “I have to ask one more question. Does Barney know about Harold?”

Harold?
It’s awful when a caller says something out of left field, and I saw a flash of panic in Chantel’s eyes. She bit her lip uncertainly, and some of her flame red lipstick smeared onto her front teeth.

“I think he does,” Chantel told her. “Yes, he’s nodding his head.” I resisted a ridiculous impulse to look around and see whether the ghostly Barney really was nodding in approval.

“And he’s okay with that?” Sylvia asked breathlessly. “Because Harold’s sleeping with me now. I know it seems a little soon, but it was just one of those things.”

Harold is sleeping with her, and Barney just passed last week?
I felt like I was caught up in an episode of
The Young and the Restless
. Or maybe
One Tree Hill
.

“I . . . Yes, I believe Barney is okay with that,” Chantel said. She swallowed, clearly flustered. “Barney seems to be drifting away now, so I’m afraid I can’t be more specific. . . .”

“I never thought I’d get another Pomeranian, but I bought Harold from the same breeder that Barney came from.” Sylvia was talking in a rush. Pressured speech, the shrinks call it. “He’s got papers and everything. I may show him at Westminster next year.”

Same breeder? Westminster?
Suddenly it all made sense.

“Barney’s a
dog
?” I blurted out.

“Of course he’s a dog,” Sylvia huffed. “A prizewinning Pomeranian. What did you think he was? I had to have him euthanized last week. His kidneys went. Dr. Harper said it was time. I just wanted to see if he was doing okay and to tell him about Harold.”

I was speechless, but Vera Mae took up the slack. “And so the circle of life continues,” she muttered into her mike. “We’re coming up on a break, and we just have time for a quick word from our sponsor, Wanda’s House of Beauty.”

The moment we went to break, Chantel and I whipped our headphones off and stared at each other in stunned silence.

“And we’re out. For two minutes!” Vera Mae yelled from the control room.

Her cone of lacquered hair tottered a little as she leaned down to jam a cassette into the deck. An annoying jingle from Wanda’s House of Beauty flooded the studio, and Vera Mae motioned for me to read the live copy that was sitting in front of me.

The thirty-second spot is called a “doughnut” because it opens and closes with music; there’s a “hole” in the middle for me to say my lines. This means there are ten seconds of music and ten seconds for me to read the ad copy, and then the music returns before fading out in the last ten seconds. It’s a good deal for the sponsor. It saves on production costs, and it’s very flexible; we can change the ad copy without recording a whole new commercial.

“Don’t miss our midweek special,” I said into my mike. The music was jacked up too high, and I practically had to shout to make myself heard. I felt myself wincing as I read the lines. Vera Mae is supposed to lower the volume for the voice-over part of the commercial, but I figured she was still rattled from Sylvia’s call. I know I was.

“Thirty percent off on highlights, this week only.” I was racing through the lines. It looked like too much copy for ten seconds, and the words were tumbling over each other. “Single-process color is only forty dollars, and that includes being blown out of this world.”

Blown out of this world?
Where had that come from? I felt like my brain had slammed into a wall. Chantel snickered, sitting back in her chair.

“I mean, that includes a
blow-dry
,” I said hastily.

Music up and out.
I saw Vera Mae bent over the control board, flipping dials, booting up the music for the end of the spot.

“Nice commercial,” Chantel said in her Queen of Snark voice. “Did you write it?”

“No, we have a copywriter.” I paused. “Well, she’s sort of a copywriter. It’s Irina, the girl at the front desk.”

Chantel laughed. “Sort of?” she mocked. “I’ll say.”

Irina strikes again!
I bit back a sigh. Irina is our beautiful blond receptionist from Sweden. She manages pretty well in English, but jokes and double entendres go whizzing right by her. Cyrus, in one of his typical cost-cutting moves, decided that Irina could double as a copywriter, churning out radio copy in addition to handling the reception desk.

I knew it was time to talk to Cyrus again about hiring a real copywriter. Someone who understands the English language. This was getting ridiculous. A few more bloopers like this, and the FCC would pull me off the air.

Vera Mae ran a promo for a Cypress Grove celebration for the next sixty seconds and muted the sound. She opened her mike, and her voice floated into the studio.

“I can’t believe it. Barney was a dog! A show dog!” She grabbed her midsection and chortled. “I have to tell you, Maggie, I never saw that one coming.”

“Barney was a dog,” I mused. “I was sure he was her boyfriend. I was really blindsided by that one.” I turned to my guest. “How about you, Chantel? I guess Sylvia caught all of us off guard.”

“She didn’t catch me off guard, not for a second.” My guest was playing it cool, inspecting her bloodred nails. They looked phony, like acrylics. Her fake-violet eyes glittered with amusement, and she ran her hand through her gypsy curls. I wondered whether they were fakes, too, maybe extensions?

“You mean you
knew
? How did you figure it out?”

“I didn’t have to figure it out. I knew it from the first word out of Sylvia’s mouth.” She gave me a nasty smirk. “And don’t forget—I
saw
Barney in the studio. Apparently you didn’t.” She threw a meaningful glance over my left shoulder, but I refused to take the bait.

I smiled at her, but I didn’t turn around.
No more head trips, Chantel!

She wrinkled her nose like Samantha does on those
Bewitched
reruns. “Poor Barney, I think he needs a bath because he’s got a major case of doggie odor.” She waited a beat to see whether I would react. I didn’t. “You know he’s still with us in the studio, right? He’s standing right behind your right shoulder, Maggie. He’s moved a little closer.”

I swear I caught a puff of hot doggie breath on my shoulder just then. And a faint whiff of liver treats.

 

“Well, that was a doozie of a show,” Vera Mae said later. “Holy moley, that call about Barney was the worst.”

“I thought the caller who wanted to talk to her dead cat was the worst.”

“Damn straight. I halfway expected Chantel to channel Mr. Whiskers for her, but you notice how she sidestepped that one by saying we’d be doing a whole segment on departed pets next week. Pretty clever, the way she gets some promo for herself.”

The show was finally over. Chantel had left the studio, blowing air kisses to the staff, and I was going over programming notes with Vera Mae in my tiny office. It’s really more of a cubicle than an office, with piles of books and papers scattered everywhere, along with newspaper clippings for show ideas, and stacks of correspondence.

You’d be surprised how many publicists send me press packets, jammed with tricolor foldouts and head shots. Either they think we have a bigger market share than we really do, or they just send out mass mailings to convince their clients that they’re covering all the bases for them.

As the show’s producer, Vera Mae is the one who’s really responsible for booking the guests, and she combs through all the big south Florida papers, the
Miami Herald
, the
Sun Sentinel
, and the
Palm Beach Post
, for story ideas. But a lot of locals feel they know me because they tune in to my show every day, so they send the material directly to me. It’s always hard to say no to someone who’s a faithful listener of
On the Couch
, but the truth is, I have to refuse most of them. The trick is to do it without ruffling their feelings.

“I have a splitting headache,” I said, reaching into my bag for a couple of aspirin. “Chantel was off her game today, wasn’t she?”

“Completely. That girl wasn’t getting anything right, bless her heart.”

Whenever Vera Mae says “bless her heart,” it means, “I’d like to wring her gosh-darn neck.”

“I don’t suppose Cyrus will care, though. We’ll still have to invite her back next week.”

“Oh, she’ll be back like clockwork,” Vera Mae said glumly. “All Cyrus cares about are the ratings, sugar.” She was nibbling on a Twizzler, the latest in her string of stop-smoking strategies. Before Twizzlers, she worked her way through a candy mountain of malted milk balls and Reese’s Pieces. “For some reason, your listeners are connecting with her, and that’s a fact. You know, we’re running those séance spots every hour on the hour. Who knew that dead folks would have so much to say?”

“That reminds me,” I said, my spirits sinking. “I’m supposed to go to one of Chantel’s séances tonight. For some reason she wants me to see her in action. Maybe she thinks it’ll give me some new insight into her spirit work, as she calls it.”

Vera Mae pulled a face. “I promised her I’d go, too. Do you want to go together? It’s down at the historical society on Water Street. We could order in a pizza and go straight from here.” She gave a wry smile. “My car’s still in the shop. I don’t know what in the world Jeb Peterson is doing to it, so if I could hitch a ride with you, that would be great.”

“Sounds good. Lark and Lola want to come, too. So we’ll swing by my place and get them on the way, if that’s okay.”

“Of course it is. The more, the merrier. You know what they say—misery loves company,” Vera Mae added wryly.

Lark, my twenty-three-year-old roommate, is into all things New Age and would never forgive me if I denied her the chance to go to a ghostly encounter. And Lola, my glamorous fiftysomething mother, is game for anything that will improve her “art.”

Lola is an aspiring actress who’s appeared in a string of B movies, and she’s always up for a new experience. It’s doubtful she’ll ever be called on to play a medium or psychic on-screen, but she’s a confirmed people watcher, and a séance was the perfect place to do it.

I opened a press packet that included a self-published book on Cypress Grove history, written by Professor Bernard Grossman, a local author. It had a cheesy cover and a gluey binding, but it was obviously a three-hundred-page labor of love. I held it up for Vera Mae. “Save or toss?”

“I’ll take it, sugar.” Vera Mae peered at the cover. “You know, I can probably get some good material out of here for those time capsule promos.” For the past month, we’d been running a major promotion called “Take Me Back in Time,” in honor of an upcoming Cypress Grove event.

Several decades ago, the town council buried a time capsule under the courthouse, with the stipulation that it would be dug up in a hundred years. But a few months ago, a developer named Mark Sanderson started negotiating to buy the courthouse. He doesn’t care about the ugly mock-Gothic building; all he’s interested in is the prime real estate it stands on. Sanderson plans on razing the courthouse and building a towering condo project on the valuable two-acre lot in the center of town. So that means the time capsule is going to be unearthed in less than two weeks, way ahead of schedule.