The Morning Show Murders (1) (38 page)

BOOK: The Morning Show Murders (1)
10.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

"It's the little stuff that catches the smarties," Solomon said.

"Once I considered the possibility of Lee being Felix, I realized there were other signs that I'd been ignoring," I said. "For a while I was dumb enough to think you were the assassin, Trina, and Lee tried
to encourage that folly in several ways, including the planting of that paintball gun near your office. She also put together a report that indicated you were in the vicinity of most of Felix's known assassinations."

"I was collecting material on Felix," Trina said. "The murders are what drew me to those places. In most cases, I arrived after the crimes had been committed. Maybe just hours after, but still ..."

"The thing is, Lee also said that many of the victims had been InterTec clients. I think she told me this in case I happened to come across reports that placed
her
at Felix's crime scenes, too. But the point is, she
was
there. And as the person responsible for security, she had both access and opportunity.

"Then there was the incident in the Tunnel that most of you know about. After sending me a written threat when I was doing a segment for the show on comic-book superheroes, she followed my car into the Lincoln Tunnel and did her best to involve me in an accident by shooting my driver and the windshield with a paintball gun. She wasn't trying to kill me, just scare the hell out of me. She didn't want to be recognized, so she got the playful idea of wearing a catlike comic-book costume. But the comic-book version of the character she was portraying wore a harlequin mask. The mask she wore covered her whole face and neck. I can think of only one reason for that. She wanted to hide the beautiful but distinctive color of her skin.

"And, finally, I remembered something that happened at the hospital. Lee moved near the handcuffed Ted Parkhurst, apparently to brush back his hair. When she did, his body jerked slightly. I should have realized the brushing motion had been a misdirection. The hand I wasn't looking at administered the fatal injection, removing the only remaining associate who might be pressured to give her up.

"It was still all conjecture," I said, "but I was spooked enough to bring my concern to A.W., who got me fixed up with a wire and kept the other agents on hand after Lee had dismissed them."

"I don't suppose she's given up the name of the villain who was financing her?" the commander asked.

"Not as of three hours ago," Detective Hawkline said.

"Of course we know who he is," the commander said. "Carl Kelstoe. The bastard was ingratiating himself with certain morally bankrupt members of the so-called power elite by eliminating people perceived as troublesome to America."

"But why were you on her list, Goyal?" Gretchen asked.

He looked at me. I'd told him about Farid Qedir, the Saudi who Lee had claimed was a former lover of Trina's. But, of course, it had not been Trina's story at all.

"An enmity as old as time," he said, answering Gretchen's question. "I doubt that anyone had to pay her to kill me."

When dinner ended and the last bite of fresh fig-and-strawberry souffle had been consumed, Bridget returned with busboys to clear the table. She took requests for after-dinner drinks, and I suggested she add a couple of pots of coffee to the list.

"Speaking of Kelstoe," A.W. said, "there's a secondary benefit he got from Felix's work, the embarrassment of his closest rival. As you mentioned, Billy, InterTec was responsible for the safety of several of the victims. Every one of those deaths cost us goodwill points. And with a VP of ours exposed as the assassin Felix, the company stock's in free fall."

"And Kelstoe's stock is on the rise," the commander said.

"I thought the congressional committee found those Touchstone mercenaries guilty of starting that riot," Lily said.

"They did," the commander said. "But the bastard has simply changed the name of the company. And Wall Street is rewarding him for his duplicity."

"Excuse me, folks," Detective Solomon said, "but before this turns into a depressing discussion about Wall Street, I've got a question for Chef Blessing."

"Shoot," I said.

"What I gather from some of the people here tonight, you spent a lot of time with this Felix. Do you think she's telling the truth when she says she didn't kill Rudy Gallagher?"

Everybody was looking at me. Gretchen's stare was particularly intense.

"It's the truth," I said. "She killed a lot of people, but she didn't kill him."

"How sure are you?"

"Sure enough," I said. "That's one of the reasons I invited you and Detective Butker here tonight." I looked at Gretchen and said, "This might be a little rough, Gretch."

"Don't worry about me, Billy. I've shed my last tear for Rudy."

I reached into my pocket and withdrew Rudy Gallagher's little black book. I tossed it to Solomon, who snagged it with one hand.

"I've seen this before," he said, flipping the pages. "So what?"

"It's Gallagher's."

"You told me this was yours."

"No. You assumed it was mine, and I didn't correct that assumption."

"I won't argue the point," he said. "So if it belonged to Gallagher, how'd you get it?"

"It was mixed in with some DVDs you guys allowed the network to remove from his apartment."

"Don't give me that. We wouldn't have missed something like this."

"You could and you did," I said.

He stuck his lower lip out in a policeman's pout and studied something in the black book. "Looks like Gallagher tore a couple pages out," he said. "Rejects, huh?"

Gallagher hadn't torn the pages. I had. Gretchen's and Melody Moon's. They wouldn't be needed for my show-and-tell.

Bridget arrived with the drinks and the coffee. She moved along the table, placing the brandies and the cognacs, then made a more complete tour with the coffee carafe.

"Check the entry right before the last torn page," I said to Solomon.

"Okay. Got it."

"Read out the phone number."

When he did, Bridget's hand jumped and she spilled coffee on the tablecloth.

"You okay?" I asked her.

"Sure," she said. "I just ... sorry."

"You look a little upset," I said. "Maybe you should sit down for a minute. We can get you a chair."

"I'm okay. I prefer to stand."

"That was your phone number, wasn't it?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"The phone number the detective just read. It's yours, right, Bridget?"

"The detective?" Her head jerked toward Solomon. "I wasn't listening."

Solomon read the number again.

"It's mine."

"So you knew Rudy Gallagher," I said.

"Sure. He came in a lot."

"And you went out with him."

"Once or twice."

"Didn't you break off your romance with Juan because you thought you were in love with Rudy Gallagher?"

"No. Not at all. I'm still with Juan."

"But you told me that you ended your affair with Juan because you'd found true love. 'The heart knows what the heart needs,' I think you said. Weren't you talking about Rudy Gallagher?"

"No. It was ... somebody else."

"Who?"

"I'd rather not say."

"Where were you the night Rudy Gallagher was murdered?" I asked.

"I don't ... Here, I guess, working."

"No. Cassandra says you felt ill and left early."

"Right. Yeah. I remember now. I was sick one night. That night, I guess."

"But not so sick you didn't take one of the night's specials home with you."

"I'm sure I didn't do that."

"You were seen carrying the white bag."

"Whoever says they saw me is mistaken."

"That would be Juan. He likes to keep an eye on you, and he is very certain."

"Well, he's wrong."

"Bridget, if Detectives Solomon and Butker were to go to your apartment right now, wouldn't they find the cleansing liquid you used to poison Rudy Gallagher?"

"What? No. Of course not. I didn't kill Rudy." She was edging toward the door. "I was at my apartment. Sick."

"We all can understand why you did it, Bridget. Rudy hurt you."

"No. No, he didn't. I barely knew--this is all wrong."

Solomon and Butker were standing now, flanking the waitress.

"Thanks for the dinner, Blessing," Solomon said. "I think we better take this young lady to where we can have a somewhat more official chat with her."

Bridget's face was chalk-white, her eyes locked on mine. "Help me," she said. And as the detectives escorted her from the room, I really wished I could have.

Chapter
SIXTY-FIVE

There is nothing like the arrest of your waitress for murder to bring a dinner party to a close.

One minute the room was filled with people thanking me and saying good-bye. The next I was standing there alone with Gretchen, who had tears in her eyes.

She hugged me and kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear, "Thank you, Billy. For the dinner, but especially for the closure."

She stepped back and said, "You may not believe me, but my heart goes out to that poor girl."

"Why wouldn't I believe you?" I said.

As she made her exit, Cassandra entered the room, one eyebrow arched.

"The princess was sniffling," she said. "Crocodile tears."

"I don't think so," I said.

"Clearly, you don't," she said. "Well, no one can say you don't throw one hell of a party."

"Thank you. I assume you know what just happened."

"It is my job to know what happens here during the hours of operation."

"The customers in the main room didn't ..."

"No. The detectives took her out the back way. You know there's something you have to do now."

I nodded. "I don't suppose you could help--"

"As I've said a hundred times, I draw the line when it comes to HR issues."

With that, she did an about-face. Considering the spikiness of her heel, I was a bit surprised she didn't screw herself into the floor. I looked back at the empty, partially bused table and saw that there was one liqueur that someone--the commander, I think--had left untouched.

I picked it up and shot it, barely experiencing its syrupy kick.

Then I headed to the bar to tell Juan that the woman he loved had just been arrested for murdering Rudy Gallagher.

Chapter
SIXTY-SIX

Several weeks after that night of nights, I had just finished the Friday edition of
Wake Up, America!
when I received a phone call from Melody Moon.

It was good to hear from her, even better when she told me the reason she called.

She'd been playing Rudy's old television shows and she'd found a CD mixed in with the DVDs. "It could be, like, a movie or TV soundtrack," she said. "But it sounds pretty real. And one of the men has this soft voice, like Clint Eastwood's, only much creepier, and he's telling the other man he wants him to assist some ... I hate the word, 'bitch,' but that's what he said ... some bitch he'd hired who was coming to the other man's military base to kill an Army officer.

"The other guy says he's not sure he can help, and the creepy-voice man gets angry and tells him to make up his mind, that the ... bitch can bring a guy named Oscar to help, but that would cost him almost double the amount."

Felix and Oscar. Rudy's "Odd Couple." I recalled the other note he wrote for himself on his kitchen blackboard. "Jewel for Berry9."

"Was the CD in the jewel box that was supposed to contain
USS Huckleberry
, disc nine?" I asked.

"Oh," she said. "Then you already know about it. I guess it was silly of me to think it might be important."

"It's very important," I said. "Can I come over now to pick it up?"

"Please," she said. "I don't like having it here. It's ugly. What's it all about, anyway?"

"In a word: karma," I said.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

AL ROKER
is known to over thirty million viewers each week for his work on NBC's
Today
show, a role that has earned him ten Emmy awards. He also has his own show on the Weather Channel,
Wake Up With Al
. He is a blockbuster
New York Times
bestselling author for his book
Don't Make Me Stop This Car!: Adventures in Fatherhood
. An accomplished cook, Roker also has two cookbooks to his credit, including the bestselling
Al Roker's Big Bad Book of Barbecue. The Morning Show Murders
marks his first foray into fiction. Bantam Dell will publish the second Billy Blessing mystery in 2010. Al resides in Manhattan with his wife, ABC News and
20/20
correspondent Deborah Roberts, and has two daughters and a son.

DICK LOCHTE
is the author of a list of popular crime novels including the award-winning
Sleeping Dog
, named one of the "100 favorite mysteries of the century" by the Independent Booksellers Association. His crime fiction column that ran for nearly a decade in the
Los Angeles Times
earned him the 2003 Ellen Nehr Award for Excellence in Mystery Reviewing. He lives in Southern California with his wife and son.

The Morning Show Murders
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors' imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Al Roker Entertainment

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D
ELACORTE
P
RESS
is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roker, Al, 1954-
The morning show murders : a novel / Al Roker and Dick Lochte.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33903-8
1. Television personalities--Fiction. 2. Cooks--Fiction.
I. Lochte, Dick. II. Title.
PS3618.O537M67 2009
813'.6--dc22 2009029294

www.bantamdell.com

v3.0

BOOK: The Morning Show Murders (1)
10.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Fruitlands by Gloria Whelan
Mar de fuego by Chufo Lloréns
Duncan by Teresa Gabelman
JF03 - Eternal by Craig Russell
Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck
Gallows Hill by Margie Orford
Grist 04 - Incinerator by Hallinan, Timothy
Extraction by Stephanie Diaz
No Gentleman for Georgina by Jess Michaels