Dig Deep My Grave

by Cheryl Honigford

  She stopped halfway up the stairs, removing her left glove.

  “Turn and smile,” she whispered to Charlie.

  They did, and Vivian was sure to turn her engagement ring out to the cameras as the flashbulbs popped.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. If you were in Charlie’s shoes, how would you feel meeting Vivian’s extended family on Oakhaven? Have you ever been introduced to a friend or significant other’s family? How did you feel in that situation? Have you ever introduced a significant other to your own family? How did that go?

  2. Compare Hap and Charlie. How do they each fit into Vivian’s world? Who do you think is her better match?

  3. Why do you think Vivian won’t accept Charlie’s proposal? Do you think her reasons are valid? If you were Vivian, how would you react to the countless proposals?

  4. How do you think Vivian feels when she sees Charlie standing with the scissors over Hap’s dead body? At any point, did you believe that Charlie could be guilty?

  5. Do you think you would make a good radio star like Vivian in her program The Darkness Knows? Why or why not? What is your dream career?

  6. Viv gives up an opportunity of a lifetime in Los Angeles to go find Charlie after receiving a telegram on the train to Hollywood. If you were in her shoes, would you get off the train or would you continue? What do you think would’ve happened if she had stayed on the train?

  7. When Vivian returns to Oakhaven, her family bands together to shut her out of the investigation, attempting to protect one of their own. How do you think Vivian feels being split between her family and the man she loves? If someone in your family did something terrible, would you try to protect them?

  8. Why do you think Vivian continues to dig into Hap’s murder after she learns of his espionage secret? If she already knows Charlie is innocent, what does she have to gain from solving the real crime?

  9. Between Gwen, Constance, and David, who do you trust the most? Who do you trust the least? Why? Do you think Vivian can rely on anyone?

  10. Do you think Aunt Adaline was right for sending Hap away from Vivian that summer when she was seventeen? If you were in her position, would you do the same?

  11. What do you make of Lillian? How do you think David feels after she dupes him?

  12. Compare Lillian and Constance. Both turn out to be villains in the story. How do they differ? Do you hold one more accountable than the other? Why?

  13. What do you think happens after the story ends? Do you think Vivian and Charlie end up happily married?

  Read on for an excerpt from Cheryl Honigford’s novel

  The Darkness Knows

  Chapter One

  October 27, 1938

  Vivian’s scream was a thing of beauty—startling and pitch-perfect, as usual. She caught her breath, waited a beat, and leaned into the microphone. “A gun!” she cried.

  She scanned the page, searching for the next line in the script. It belonged to the villain in tonight’s episode, and Vivian felt Dave Chapman tense next to her in preparation.

  “That’s right, sweetheart,” Dave said. “And you’re a goner.”

  The organ music swelled, rose higher, reached a crescendo. Vivian held her position for a few seconds and then relaxed when she heard the first few bars of the Sultan’s Gold cigarette jingle.

  You’ll be sold on Sultan’s Gold.

  The cigarette that’s truly mellow…

  Her eyes caught Graham’s over the microphone. He winked at her, and she felt that wink slide slowly down her body to settle in the tips of her toes.

  Graham Yarborough had the kind of looks that were thoroughly wasted on the radio, she thought: dark, debonair, and eminently distracting. Working with him had been somewhat of a challenge, because gazing at Graham tended to make her lose focus.

  Not that Vivian was anything to sneeze at either: petite with strawberry-blond hair and doe-brown eyes. She caught appreciative glances from the men at the radio station, on the streetcar, everywhere really. She’d had several marriage proposals in her short life, but Vivian had turned every one of them down. None of them had been remotely suitable choices, but even if they had, she’d decided she wanted some excitement before she settled down and had to start worrying about developing dishpan hands.

  She was still ruminating on her escape from drudgery when she noticed that silence hung heavy in the studio. Not merely a silence, but an utter vacuum of sound. Vivian’s stomach lurched, and she turned to Dave. He jabbed a finger at his script, eyes wide with urgency. They were back from sponsor break, and it was her line.

  “I think Mr. Diamond will have something to say about that,” she said, the line bursting from her lips in a nearly incoherent rush of air. She didn’t dare look into the control booth. Dead air was anathema in the radio business.

  Instead, against her better judgment, she sneaked another peek at Graham, Harvey Diamond himself. At the moment, he appeared every bit the tough, troubled hero of The Darkness Knows, his face a mask of scowling intensity as he waited for his next line.

  “Mr. Diamond?” Dave said. “Your Mr. Diamond will never make it in time. You’ll be dead, and the emeralds will be mine.”

  “That’s what you thought, Glanville,” Graham interjected, leaning toward the microphone. He paused for a short burst of organ music. “You thought tying me up in a deserted mine shaft was going to keep me away? Now you’re going to pay.”

  The well-choreographed struggle began on cue. The organ hummed. The soundman punched a fist into his open palm once, twice while he scuffled his feet through the small tray of gravel in the corner. Graham growled, “Take that!” There was the sound of a single gunshot—a blank fired into the air from a real pistol—then a beat of silence.

  Vivian glanced into the control room. Joe McGreevey, the director, held a stopwatch. Looking panicked, he started bringing his open palms together in front of his chest. “Hurry up,” he mouthed. The timing was off, and they were behind.

  “Harvey!” Vivian shrieked. “Oh, Harvey, are you all right?”

  “It’s over,” Graham said. “I’ve disarmed him, and he’s out cold. There’s a jail cell with this mug’s name all over it.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. But how did you ever escape from that mine shaft?”

  “Well, that’s a long story,” Graham ad-libbed. The original script contained three lines of extra dialogue detailing Harvey’s harrowing escape. He looked up at Vivian and smiled as he delivered his final line: “How about we talk about it over dinner, doll?”

  The theme music crept in from the organ in the far corner of the room, signaling that another episode had reached its dramatic conclusion.

  Bill Purdy, the show’s announcer, stepped up to the microphone to end the show. Vivian held her breath until she heard “…and Vivian Witchell was heard as Lorna Lafferty.” She didn’t think she’d ever grow tired of hearing those words.

  Bill deftly sped up to complete the voice-over before the second hand of the large studio clock swept up to the hour indicating the very dot of 8:30 p.m. Then the chimes rang to signal a change of programming. As soon as the on-air light switched off, they all heaved a collective sigh of relief.

  “Good work, everyone,” Joe said over the speaker from behind the thick glass of the control room. “But there’s no time to rest on our laurels. We do it all again at ten o’clock for the folks on the West Coast.” He switched off the microphone, paused, and then switched it back on. “And let’s all try to remember our cues next time around.”

  Vivian quickly dipped her head to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes and pretended to study her script.

  She’d been doing small parts on shows at WCHI for over a year now, and there was certainly no excuse for missing a cue. Lorna Lafferty and The Darkness Knows were by far the biggest and best things to ever happen to her, and she couldn’t afford to muck them
up—not when she was just starting to get noticed.

  In fact, Vivian had just gotten her first mention in the Chicago “Tattler” section of this week’s Radio Guide magazine. She’d read and reread the blurb so many times she’d committed it to memory: “Former WCHI secretary Vivian Witchell gets raves for her new role as sidekick to popular gumshoe Harvey Diamond. She replaced Edie Waters, who left the show for marriage and the stork. I hear Vivian’s a class act and that everyone who knows her thinks the world of her, including her costar Graham Yarborough. The two have been seen out on the town together more than once and may, in fact, be Radioland’s newest couple.”

  Vivian smiled ruefully at the idea. Sure, she and Graham had been out on the town together—strictly for publicity photos.

  “Nice work.”

  Vivian looked up at Graham and smiled. He looked especially rakish this evening; no jacket or tie, shirtsleeves rolled up to expose muscled forearms.

  “Thanks, but I think you saved the show,” she replied, cocking a thumb at the control room. “And you may have also saved Joe from a massive coronary… The timing’s all wrong in the second half.” She flipped absently through the pages of her battered script.

  “Well,” Graham said, bending slightly forward. “We’ll have to fix that.”

  Vivian could feel his warm breath on her cheek. It smelled lightly of menthol cigarettes and coffee.

  “Yes,” she said, eyes flicking up to meet his gaze. “We will.”

  They regarded each other for a few seconds in silence.

  “Viv…” Graham began.

  “Yes?”

  Someone lurking just outside Vivian’s field of vision cleared their throat.

  “Speaking of bad timing,” Vivian muttered under her breath.

  For more Cheryl Honigford check out book

  one in the Viv and Charlie Mystery series

  The Darkness Knows

  On sale now!

  A Conversation with the Author

  We see Vivian finally announce that Charlie is her fiancé at the end of the story. What do you think happens to the pair after the story closes?

  They do get married—eventually—but let’s just say the course of true love doesn’t run smooth. Honestly, what else would you expect from those two?

  You paint a very vivid picture of 1930s Chicago in Dig Deep My Grave. What kind of research went into this?

  I loved researching this book! I live close to Lake Geneva, so I went several times to Black Point Estate, a beautiful Victorian cottage built by a beer barren in the 1880s. You have to take a boat there, and it’s such a lovely place. That’s what Oakhaven is modeled after. I spent a lot of time at the Geneva Lake Museum (and stayed so late, they turned the lights off on me). I also really got into the Superchief research, and I found an old book that had such incredible detail about the train—menus, decor, engines, schedules, etc. I wish it (or anything remotely like it) still existed. I’d love to take a trip cross-country on that train.

  What do you think is Vivian’s greatest quality? Charlie’s?

  Vivian has chutzpah. She’s really grown as a person throughout the series. She’s more independent and willing to fight for what she believes in in this book. Charlie, on the other hand, is steady and reliable (while also managing to be a bit dangerous).

  Which character did you connect with the most?

  Hap, surprisingly. He started out as this shallow, one-dimensional cad, but the more backstory that came out about him, the more interesting he became to me. I’m almost sorry he had to die.

  Vivian makes a hard choice on the train heading toward LA, deciding to seek out Charlie instead of pursuing her opportunity in Hollywood. If you were in Vivian’s shoes, what would you have done?

  I’d like to think I would have done the same as Viv in that situation, but until I find myself on a luxury train headed toward a screen test in Hollywood and receive word that my love is running from a murder rap—well, I really don’t know how I’d react.

  There’s a major plot twist in the story that will leave readers reeling. How do you go about writing such a winding narrative?

  I got stuck. That’s the short answer. I remember sitting and staring at the blinking cursor on the screen and having no idea what came next in the story. I did some brainstorming and wrote down a list of the most unexpected things that could happen at that point in the plot. The twist I ended up with was the craziest on the list, and I had a lot of fun figuring out how to make that work within the framework of the existing story.

  When you’re not writing, how do you spend your time?

  Writing is the kind of pursuit where you might not see the finished product of your work for years. I also have a day job that requires long hours at the computer with not a lot of tangible output. So when I’m not writing I like to hand-make things. I crochet, knit, bake—anything creative that I can see the results of almost immediately. It’s really satisfying. And probably saves my sanity, to be honest.

  About the Author

  Photo by Scott Lawrence

  Cheryl Honigford is the author of the Daphne Award–winning The Darkness Knows and Homicide for the Holidays. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago, where she enjoys listening to old-time radio, watching classic movies, tumbling down historical research rabbit holes, and living vicariously through her writing.

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