by Lauren Carr
“No problem,” Ryan Ritter said while scrolling through the screen on his phone. “I do my own makeup. Learned a long time ago that if you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself.” Putting the cell phone to his ear, he followed Preston Blakeley out of the control booth.
The previous quiet during the recording of Pam Wiehl’s segment had erupted into loud voices and equipment moving around the studio while technicians, camera operators, and a host of other members of the crew rushed around the set to prepare for Yvonne Harding’s segment.
Upon exiting the booth, David and Mac found Yvonne reading her copy in preparation for her segment. Her expert, a psychologist, was in the process of having her body mic attached.
“Fifteen minutes, crew,” Jim Wiehl’s voice boomed throughout the studio via an intercom. “Then we’ll begin recording Harding’s troll segment.”
“Now’s your chance,” Mac whispered while ushering David toward the news desk on the stage.
When David hesitated to move toward Yvonne, Mac shoved him forward.
Gnarly tugged on his leash to head toward the far wall, where an exit led out into the corridor, elevators, and stairwell. Wrapping the leash around his hand, Mac led Gnarly to the far outside wall of the control booth. Not wanting Yvonne to see him watching them, Mac kept back, hiding among the dark shadows of a lighting rack. He wanted to be close by so he could jump in to back David up if need be.
Behind her, David climbed the steps up to the stage. “Yvonne.”
He saw her stand up straight. She lowered her script and turned around. Her face was void of emotion. “I’m surprised to see you here, David.”
“You shouldn’t be. You still haven’t signed the divorce papers.”
Yvonne glanced around at the dozens of crew members scurrying about. The assistant director, who was on their left, was giving instructions to the psychologist, who was on their right.
Trying to stay out of the crew’s way in his spot behind the lights, Mac kept a tight hold on Gnarly’s leash. When the dog uttered a low growl, Mac tore his attention away from David and Yvonne’s discussion to see what had captured the dog’s interest. Someone was coming into the studio. The bright light from the corridor outside spilled in through the open door to cast the scruffy-looking visitor clad in a worn tan jacket and work boots in silhouette. Because of the way the visitor was looking around the studio and moving about hesitantly, Mac assumed it was his first time in a television studio.
Wonder what show he’s on?
“Excuse me, David,” Yvonne said before bringing her hand to her ear. “Yeah, Fred? Okay. I’m ready.” She then turned to David and said, “They need to do a sound check on my mic.”
While stepping down off the set, Yvonne reached under her jacket to adjust the controls on the unit clipped to the back of her skirt. She gestured for David to follow her to the other side of the set, away from the commotion of the crew, and then she turned to him. “We could have talked about it this afternoon, but you took off.”
“Because I didn’t want to discuss it in bed,” David said. “That phase of our relationship is over, Yvonne. You don’t seem to get it. I’m marrying Chelsea this weekend.”
“And then right after that, you can go to jail for bigamy.” She grinned. “You’re the one who has failed to get it, David. I don’t want to sign those papers because I don’t want a divorce. I wanted to marry you years ago. Now we’re married, and I’m not letting you go.”
“To what end?” David asked. “You live here in New York. I’m in Deep Creek Lake.”
“We’ll have two homes.”
“I have no interest in living here with all these loonies.”
“David, you have no idea how much money I make,” Yvonne said. “When Dad died, he left me a fortune. You don’t have to work. You can stay here, and I’ll give you everything you ever wanted. All you have to do—”
“I’m not wired like that, Yvonne,” he said. “What happened to you? You think that you can trap me, lock me up in this concrete cage called a city, and hand me a bunch of toys, and I’ll be happy? You know me better than that.”
“We’ll make it work.” Her lips curled. “You have no choice, David, because I’m not signing those papers.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” He reached into his inside breast pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. He held it out to her.
She refused to touch it. “I told you I wasn’t signing those.”
“These aren’t the divorce papers,” David said. “This is a copy of a publishing contract. Mac’s lawyer made a few phone calls this afternoon. Right now, three publishing companies are in a bidding war for my story.”
“Your story?”
“I’m calling it Life with Yvonne,” David said. “My kiss-and-tell book.” He chuckled. “I am your husband, after all. Your fans must be dying to know what it’s like to be married to Yvonne Harding.” He leaned in to whisper, “I’m going to tell them everything. Since we grew up together, I have a lot of material. I know all about you … your secrets.” A wicked grin crossed his face. “Wait until you read chapter seven about that weekend when we went to the Outer Banks and you—”
“That’s blackmail!”
The harshness of her voice caused all action around them to cease.
David’s eyes were locked on hers. “Yes, it is.”
He was surprised to see tears fill her eyes. For a moment, he wavered about going through with his threat. But if he wanted to stay true to Chelsea, he had no choice. He needed Yvonne’s signature.
“David,” she said in a soft voice, “I love you. Can’t you see that?”
“I love you, too, Yvonne,” he replied in a low voice, “but it’s too late for us. I’m marrying Chelsea.”
“Because you love her, or because you owe it to her?” she asked.
“That’s not important,” David said. “The fact is that we’re both different people than we were four years ago. This”—he gestured at the studio and the crew rushing around—“this is your life now. It’s not mine. I don’t belong here. I belong in Deep Creek Lake. It’s time for you to let me go.”
“And if I don’t?” She blinked her big blue eyes at him. “You aren’t really going to sell my story, are you?”
David clenched his jaw. “You know better than to mess with me, Yvonne.” He reached inside his jacket to extract the divorce papers and held them out to Yvonne.
She gazed at the papers in his hand and then up into his face. “Oh, David, ” she said in a breathy voice before falling against him.
David heard Gnarly erupt into a series of angry barks. Across the studio, he saw the German shepherd dart out from behind a bank of stage lights and charge for the snack table. The exit door was pushed open, and a dark figure rushed out of the studio.
Mac was so focused on Yvonne collapsing into David’s arms that when Gnarly shot toward the far wall and exit, he ripped the leash out of Mac’s hand. Before Mac could react, Gnarly leaped over the snack table, scattering the contents and the table to the floor, and took out a shelving unit before slipping out the exit door, which slammed shut after him.
“Gnarly, no!” Mac shouted at the runaway dog.
Grasping Yvonne in his arms, David tried to pull her up onto her feet, but they slid out from under her. She was like dead weight in his arms. “Yvonne, stop it! Stand up!” With his arms around her, he felt something warm and moist coat his hand. His heartbeat quickened. Looking over her shoulder, David examined his hand to find that it was coated with fresh, bright-red blood.
A member of the crew who saw the blood at the same time screamed.
“David—” Yvonne gasped out while clinging to his jacket.
Mac had both hands on the exit door and was in the process of opening it when he heard the scream followed by David’s bellowing, “Somebody call nine-one-one!”
Blood gushing from her back was covering David’s arms and clothes. “Yvonne, darling, stay with me,” he pleaded with her as he shrugged out of his sports coat so he could use it to stop the bleeding. “You’re going to be okay.”
“No, I’m not,” she breathed. “Hold me, David.”
He cradled her in his arms. “I’m here, darling. Don’t try to talk.”
“You’re right, David, I’m not the same woman.”
Gnarly must have seen the perp! Grabbing his gun out of the holster he wore on the back of his belt, Mac spun around to go out the door that Gnarly had slipped out before it had slammed shut.
Jim Wiehl came running out of the control booth to talk to Mac. “What happened? Did Yvonne faint?” His eyes grew wide. “Is she pregnant?”
Mac was more interested in catching whomever Gnarly was chasing. He had to have had a hand in hurting Yvonne, the woman David had once loved enough to marry, even if he hadn’t known it at the time.
David was hugging Yvonne close. He pressed his sports coat, which was soaked with blood, against the wound in her back. “Ambulance is on its way, baby. You got to hold on. What happened, baby?”
Her smile was weak. “Baby. That’s what you used to call me.”
Donning only a single false eyelash, Pam Wiehl pushed her way through the gathering crowd with Ian Griffith, one of the show’s cohosts, directly behind her. “What happened?” Pam demanded to know. “We heard someone shot Yvonne?”
Blocking out the onlookers around them, David whispered to Yvonne, “We’ll work this out.”
“You were right,” she said. “I changed. Do you know when?”
“When?”
“When you didn’t ask me to stay.” Her voice was weak. “Why didn’t you ask me to stay?”
It didn’t take Mac long to locate Gnarly. As soon as he burst into the stairwell, he could hear the German shepherd barking several flights below him. The dog’s deep barks echoed up and down the stairwell. Mac could also hear voices of people, many of whom he assumed were security guards, calling to one another both above and below him in the stairwell.
“Did someone call out a K-9 unit?” Mac heard a guard call to someone.
“The dog is with me,” Mac yelled while making his way down the stairs in the direction of Gnarly’s barking. “He’s chasing a suspect!”
“Looks like he caught him,” the guard said.
Keeping his gun aimed at the floor, Mac continued to trot down the stairs. Gnarly’s barks slowed down as more uniformed security guards and officers arrived at the scene down on the ground floor, thirty-six flights down to the main floor.
Oh, God, I hope she makes it. Can David marry Chelsea days after Yvonne dies?
By the time Mac made it to the main level, Gnarly was sitting off in the corner. Across from him, the dog was watching two uniformed New York police officers create a barricade to keep security guards and news journalists away from the lifeless body of the man they assumed had killed Yvonne Harding. One of the uniformed officers was reporting the discovery of the body to his station. “Carl Rubenstein. Building security says he was outside this afternoon threatening Yvonne Harding for causing the murder of his wife.”
Crumbled at the bottom of the stairs was the body of Carl Rubenstein. A black gun with a silencer still attached to the muzzle rested in the open space in the center of the stairwell.
“Is he—” Mac started to ask. “Who shot him?” He took in the confused faces of the two police officers and the two security guards. He showed his police badge to one of the uniformed officers to identify himself, as well as his gun to prove that he had not fired it.
One of the security guards shook his head. “I got a call from upstairs saying that Yvonne had collapsed and might’ve been stabbed. Then I heard the dog barking and came into the stairwell to see if I could intercept the guy who did it.” When I stepped in, I saw him rolling down the stairs.” He pointed up the stairs. “The dog was, like, two flights up. I saw the gun bounce off the railing and hit the floor at about the same time as he landed there.”
“He must have been turning around to shoot the dog,” one of the uniformed officers said. “But then he tripped and fell on his own gun.”
After being moved away from the scene by the uniformed officers, Mac took hold of Gnarly’s leash and led him away from the dead body. Kneeling next to the dog, Mac peered as closely as he could at the gun. It appeared to be a three-eighty caliber pistol fitted with a silencer. But there was something different about it.
“How’d he get the gun in the building?” the older guard asked his partner. “What was he doing upstairs?”
“One of the producers put his name on the list of guests for Crime Watch,” the other guard replied. “Surprised me too, after the way he was mouthing off outside. But he came in less than an hour ago, and we had a visitor’s application. I personally watched him go through the metal detector. He didn’t have a gun on him. He said Yvonne Harding herself was going to interview him on the air.”
“Where did he get the gun?” one of the police officers asked.
“Don’t know where he got it,” Mac sighed. “But I can tell you how he got it through the metal detector.” He stood up.
“How?” the guard who had watched Rubenstein go through the metal detector asked.
Mac pointed at the gun. “No way would your metal detector have picked up that gun. It’s made out of plastic.”
Up at the studio, Mac waded through the police officers and EMTs until he spotted David sitting off to the side. His clothes were soaked with blood. Never had Mac seen such a stricken expression on his face.
Gnarly trotted up and placed his paw and head down on David’s thigh.
“David,” Mac murmured, even though he knew what the news would be. David’s expression said it all.
A single tear spilled out of one of David’s tear-filled eyes and rolled down his cheek. “She’s gone.”
Chapter Nine
As soon as the police arrived, Mac, David, and every witness and potential suspect were separated so that their statements could be taken. Over and over again, Mac overheard the same thing.
“Is it true she was shot?”
“Did you see all the blood?”
“I didn’t hear a shot. Did you? I think she was stabbed.”
Across the studio, Mac was waiting for a detective to take his statement and watching David, who was covered with blood, stare at Yvonne’s lifeless body. Her body was lying at the bottom of the steps leading up to the news desk where she was supposed to have been conducting an interview at that very minute. Gnarly was lying next to David’s feet, staring mournfully while the on-scene medical examiner poked and prodded the once-beautiful young woman.
They should get David out of here. He shouldn’t have to see them handling her like that. A uniformed officer had told Mac to sit in a cast chair on the other side of the set. Just as he stood up to go find the detective in charge, his cell phone vibrated on his hip.. He checked the caller ID, which read, Willingham.
Ed Willingham had been Robin Spencer’s lawyer, and she had had him on retainer to handle her business affairs. One of the top lawyers in the country, Ed Willingham was the one who’d hunted Mac down after her death. Now he was keeping Mac’s and his two grown children’s legal and business affairs in order.
“Hello, Ed,” Mac answered the phone.
“I just saw the news,” the lawyer replied in a rushed tone. “Yvonne Harding is dead!”
“Yeah, Ed,” Mac said. “It’s a mess. David was standing right in front of her and trying to get her to sign the divorce papers when she collapsed. We believe we found the murder weapon. The shooter used—”
“She’s dead?”
“Yes. That, I do know.”
“Tell me David got her to sign those papers.” The lawyer bit off eve
ry word.
Mac searched his memory of David’s and Yvonne’s movements in the minutes leading up to her collapse. He hadn’t seen her sign anything. “I don’t think so.”
“Damn it!” After uttering an exasperated sigh, Ed growled into the phone and said, “Where is David now?”
“Waiting for a detective to take his statement,” Mac replied. “He’s really shaken up, Ed. I think he’s in shock. I was about—”
“Mac, listen to me carefully,” Ed interjected. “If Yvonne didn’t sign those papers, David is going to be more than shaken up. He’s her husband!”
“And the first suspect homicide detectives look at when someone is killed is the spouse,” Mac said. “We do that for a reason. But David and Yvonne only just found out that they were married. They weren’t living—”
“Yvonne Harding was a very wealthy woman,” Ed said. “I was the executor for her father’s estate. Man was as tight with a penny as they come. He left her everything. That, plus what she made since signing with the network—”
“How much are we talking about?” Mac asked.
“Millions,” Ed said.
“But if she had that much money, she must have had a will. Since she didn’t know that she was married, she most likely left everything to someone else, which would not give David motive to murder her.”
“She was also a young woman,” Ed said. “No husband or kids. If she had a standard will leaving everything to her next of kin, then that gives David, her husband, a very strong motive to want her dead. Does anyone know they’re married?”
“We didn’t tell anyone,” Mac said.
“I’m getting on the next flight,” Ed said. “Tell David not to talk to anyone until I get there.”
“Calm down, Ed,” Mac said, “David was standing in front of her when she was shot in the back, and they believe they have the shooter and the gun. Everything is fine.”
“I’d feel better if the detective in charge told me that himself,” Ed said before hanging up the phone.
While disconnecting the call, Mac saw Lieutenant Wayne Hopkins enter the studio and make a beeline for David. Quickly, Mac pressed the buttons on his cell phone to send a text to David.