Top of the Hour

by Anina Collins

  Alex laughed and pointed toward the WXSN tower with the bright red light atop it that loomed in the distance. “Far be it from me to be the cause of you becoming jaded. Let’s see what the people at the radio station have to say about our victim, and then we’ll see if Jessica is still a person of interest.”

  The barely lit lobby of the WXSN building stood empty, except for a single security guard sitting at his post just inside the double glass entrance doors. We approached him and Alex flashed his badge and told him we needed to speak to someone in charge, so the guard quickly ushered us back into where the offices were located. A woman with burgundy colored hair and matching long fake nails sat at her desk typing on her computer and didn’t seem to even notice when we walked up to her desk.

  Clearing his throat, Alex looked down at her and waited for her to acknowledge our presence, but still she didn’t look up. I saw white wires coming from her ears and knew why. Miming the idea of her wearing headphones, I pointed at my own ears and said, “She can’t hear us because she’s listening to music.”

  He smirked and banged his hand down on the desk next to her keyboard so loudly it echoed throughout the office area. The secretary nearly jumped out of her skin and stood up, yanking the earbuds out of her ears.

  “What the hell?” she screamed before she recognized a policeman stood in front of her.

  “My name is Officer Montero and this is my partner. We need to speak to someone in charge here.”

  Still flustered, the woman sat back down on her office chair and picked up her earphones. “There’s nobody but me in the office at night.”

  Alex leaned down so his face was right in front of hers and in a low voice said, “Then you’ll have to do. What’s your name?”

  “Mercedes. Mercedes Sinclair. What’s up?”

  Standing to his full height, Alex pulled out his notepad and pen and asked, “What can you tell me about Lee Reynolds, Ms. Sinclair?”

  She flailed her hands around making me worried she might slice her face with those purple-colored talons of hers. “Nothing. He did the morning show, and I work nights. We never saw each other.”

  “What time does your shift start each day?” he asked as he made notes about her name and her job at the station.

  “Six. I usually get here around quarter to, though.”

  Alex looked up from his notes and arched a single eyebrow. “And you’ve never had occasion to see Lee Reynolds not even once? How long have you worked here?”

  Mercedes seemed confused by his questions, likely because he was treating her like someone he had real evidence against. I had no idea why he was acting like that, but I assumed he had a sense that this woman who obviously loved adding color to her body wasn’t being as forthright as she should be with him.

  “I swear I never saw him in the three years I’ve worked here. He works early morning hours, so why would I? But Jake Warren is here and he definitely knew him. They’re both DJs, so I’m sure they see each other in meetings and things like that.”

  Alex turned on that smile he wore whenever he was happy that a witness told him something he wanted to hear. “Where would we find Mr. Warren, Mercedes?”

  She spun around in her seat so her burgundy hair twirled around her head and pointed a purple-tipped finger toward the back of the office area. “Right in there. He’s the only DJ in the building right now.”

  We left the rattled night secretary for WXSN and headed back to speak to the early night shift DJ. Popular because his show featured eighties and nineties rock hits, Jake Warren was a favorite of many listeners in Sunset Ridge, even those too old to know much about the music he played. I’d seen him once or twice at events The Eagle organized with the radio station and remembered him to look like an aging rocker from the time period he seemed to love.

  He sat alone behind a wall of glass and in front of a microphone speaking to his audience about how great those days used to be when men wore their hair long and the music rocked. Alex signaled to him to come out into the room where his producer sat, and while he arranged for some Led Zeppelin song that would eat up the next ten minutes of airtime, Alex questioned the man in front of the controls about Lee Reynolds.

  “I knew nothing of him, to be honest. I only work with Jake here. Someone else does the early shows.”

  “So you’ve never even spoken to him? What time does your shift start?”

  “Four. I usually get here by three-thirty, but I’ve never talked to Reynolds.”

  Jake Warren came into the room where the three of us stood and told his producer to watch the time. Turning to face us, he asked, “What’s up? That old drug charge catch up with me?”

  I looked at the man standing in front of us and couldn’t help but imagine him in a full-blown mullet back in the day. His brown hair still hung past his shoulders, but now it was pulled back into a ponytail. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days so his scraggly beard with patches of grey stood off his face at attention. His clothes consisted of a faded black and grey Alice Cooper concert t-shirt that had to be decades old and ripped jeans, and a dim look in his eyes told me that old drug charge would still be valid at that very moment.

  “We want to talk to you about Lee Reynolds. When was the last time you saw him?”

  I worked to stifle my smile at Alex’s decision not to introduce himself or me, which I was sure was an indication of what he thought of Jake Warren. For his part, Warren didn’t seem fazed by the fact that a policeman was questioning him about anything.

  “I think I saw him a few weeks ago. I didn’t really know Lee because we worked opposite schedules, and by the time I was coming in at three to begin the six PM shift, Lee was usually gone, even though he should be there until three for station meetings. Never saw him at even one in all my time here.”

  Alex wrote down the word disgruntled in his notes and asked, “How long have you worked here, Mr. Warren?”

  “Mr. Warren? Dude, call me Jake. And I’ve worked here for eight months.”

  I watched him for any indication he was lying, but his dull eyes weren’t giving away any details. Alex thanked him for his help and told him in a serious voice we’d return if we had any other questions, but none of it seemed to faze the DJ. He simply mumbled something about rocking on with our bad selves and went back to work.

  Chuckling at how stuck in the past Jake Warren truly was, I saw Alex roll his eyes in disgust before he turned to leave. “You wrote disgruntled next to Jake’s name. Seems odd that he sounded so out of sorts about a guy he didn’t know and never saw, don’t you think?”

  As we headed out of the office area, he nodded. “Exactly, but then again, his emotions might have been confused by what he smoked before we got here.”

  “You noticed that too? He’s as high as a kite,” I said with a laugh. “He didn’t seem very nervous about talking to a cop, though.”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to laugh. “What was I going to do? Arrest him for being a stoner? I’d actually have to see him with the drugs.”

  “Well, if Lee was working late like his wife said he did often on Thursdays, then Jake just wasn’t seeing him. Do you think it was because he was off getting high?”

  “Either that or Lee wasn’t working late.”

  On our way out, we ran into a janitor and asked him if he’d ever seen Lee Reynolds when he worked late. The man explained he started his shift at three each afternoon, Monday through Friday, and he hadn’t seen Lee in the year he’d worked there.

  “Do you clean the offices or does someone else do that?”

  The janitor smiled and told Alex he was in charge of cleaning the offices. I wondered why Alex didn’t just demand to be let into Lee’s office, but he must have had his reasons. Instead, he asked the man if he ever found anything interesting in Lee’s office, and instantly the man became excited.

  “I did. Wait here and I’ll go get it.”

  As we stood there while he ran to the janitor’s closet, I whispered to Alex, “W
hy didn’t you just tell him to let us into the office?”

  “Because he’s a janitor and likely doesn’t have the right to let us in anywhere here. I don’t need any evidence we find being thrown out by some clever defense attorney because I didn’t get the station manager’s approval to search the office.”

  The man came running back down the hall toward us and handed Alex a folded piece of paper. “I found this last week when I was cleaning. It was just lying there on the floor next to his desk. I know I shouldn’t have taken it, but…”

  The man’s voice trailed off and he hung his head. Alex opened the note and read it with a big smile on his face. Patting the man on the back, he said, “You did the right thing. Thank you. We’ll come back tomorrow when the station manager is in, but you’ve been a great help.”

  The older man walked away clearly pleased from Alex’s praise, and I waited for him to tell me what the note said. I knew it had to be something good by the look on his face, and then he spoke, and I had a feeling my faith in Jessica Reynolds or her marriage was about to be tested.

  “I hate to ruin your belief in true love once again, but I don’t think Lee’s wife was telling us the entire truth when she said they were blissfully happy. Not if this lovely note by Cherise is any indication.”

  I really hated the fact that people’s behavior made his glee so justified.

  Chapter Two

  My second cup of coffee for the day hit exactly the spot I needed it to as I waited for Alex to show up at The Grounds. Wide awake and ready to continue our investigation of Lee Reynolds’ murder, I didn’t look forward to hearing him practically gloat about being right about our victim’s wife and their not-so-perfect life together.

  At least that note he found made it seem like it wasn’t as perfect as she’d made it out to be.

  Alex arrived at exactly nine AM right on time. Wearing his street clothes, he quickly reached for the coffee I’d gotten for him. “Thank God for this or you might have to prop me up in this chair. I was stuck at the station until after two this morning dealing with this murder case. Derek seems particularly keen on us getting this wrapped up as soon as possible.”

  “Why? What makes this any different than any other crime?”

  He shrugged and took a gulp of his coffee. “I don’t know. He mentioned something about the press being interested since our victim was a celebrity.”

  “A celebrity? He was a talk radio guy at a small town radio station. I wouldn’t exactly call that a celebrity, Alex.”

  His look of disgust told me he agreed even before he spoke. “I didn’t say I thought he was anything big. I’m just telling you what’s got Derek all worked up. He made me promise we’d make this case our first priority.”

  I had to laugh. We had no real cases to deal with other than Lee Reynolds’ murder. “You mean we should put the riveting case of Mrs. Timmon’s dug-up hardy mums on the back burner?”

  “You think it’s funny, but I’ll be getting calls from her every day until I figure out which neighborhood kid is ripping up those ugly yellow flowers of hers. But yes, Derek wants us on the murder case exclusively. He’s reassigned a bunch of the guys so we can devote all our time to this case.”

  I tapped the edge of my coffee cup against his and smiled. “Then we better get to work so you don’t have to deal with your chief any more than you need to. I figure you’re going to throw that note in my face since you seemed pretty happy about it last night.”

  Alex slipped the note out from between the pages of his notepad and held it up in front of me. “Not happy. Just interested in what looks to be an intriguing clue.”

  “Okay, Mr. All-Too-Interested. Read it to me again so I can enjoy this note too.”

  He looked around like he wasn’t sure he should read me what it said in a public place, so I took it out of his hand and read it for myself. To say it was steamy would be an understatement.

  I loved seeing you again last night. You definitely know how to make a girl’s thighs quiver, but then again, you always have. It’s been too long since I got to see that side of you. I hope it won’t be the last time. Until then, think of how it felt when I did that thing with my tongue.

  Cherise

  Looking up from the note, I saw Alex grinning at me. “She sure does know how to send a message.”

  “She does,” he said as he wiggled his eyebrows before his expression turned serious. “What we don’t know is when that note was written, though. Was Lee Reynolds cheating on his wife or was this just some note from his past?”

  I handed him the piece of paper and thought about Jessica’s reaction to the news of her husband’s death. He had a beautiful and devoted wife in her, so I had a hard time thinking he would step out.

  “My vote is for it being from his past, but I have to admit I’m wondering why he would have kept that note as some kind of memento.”

  Alex didn’t seem as convinced of our victim’s love for his wife, though. “Let’s say for argument’s sake that he was having an affair and meeting this woman every Thursday when he told his wife he was working late. That would explain why no one seems to have seen him at the station on any Thursday afternoon or evening.”

  “I’m not a fan of this argument, Alex, but okay, let’s say that’s how it happened. We need to find out who this Cherise person is and talk to her.”

  Almost as if he hadn’t heard me speak, he continued, “On the other hand, in a town as small as Sunset Ridge and with his being a sort-of celebrity, I would think that cheating on his wife would have been a dangerous chance to take. I wonder how long he and Jessica were married.”

  “You have a partner, you know. I’m not just a pretty face and someone to make you look less scary to the townsfolk.”

  He smiled like he finally heard me. “I was just thinking out loud. Do you have something you’d like to add?”

  I took out my cell phone from my purse and dialed up my friend Keri Maloney at the county records office. “Even better. Just give me a minute and I might have an answer to that last question of yours.”

  She answered on the second ring and gave her professional spiel about how I’d contacted the county records office and she’d be happy to help me however she could, but I stopped her just as she began to give the office’s hours.

  “Keri, it’s Poppy. Take a breath.”

  “Poppy! How are you? It’s been way too long since we talked. What’s new?”

  “I need your help with something. Can you tell me how long someone’s been married if I give you their name?”

  A rustling sound of papers came through the phone before she said, “Yeah, sure. I just had to clear my desk a little to get to my computer. Who are we checking up on?”

  “Lee and Jessica Reynolds. Can you tell me when they were married?”

  She tapped on a few keys and then answered, “May 10, 2012, so they’ve been married for four years. First marriage for her and the second for him.”

  I felt my eyes grow wide from excitement at hearing there was a former Mrs. Lee Reynolds. “What was the first wife’s name?”

  Hearing that, Alex perked up from sitting there as he stared at the sexy note and mouthed, “He was married before?”

  I nodded and then heard Keri say, “Cherise Adams Reynolds. They divorced in April 2012.”

  Now I was even more excited. In a rush to get off the phone and back to discussing the case, I said, “Thanks a million, Keri! I won’t forget your help with this.”

  “You okay, Poppy? This isn’t for some guy you’re dating, is it?”

  I knew what she was referring to. She’d known me for years and was around when I found out about Jared’s cheating on me. I hated that she thought I hadn’t recovered from that and would be checking up on some guy I was dating like some broken and pathetic girl even now, years later.

  “No, no. I’m working with the police now and I just needed to know some details about Lee and Jessica Reynolds’ marriage. That’s all.”

&nbs
p; “Okay. I’m happy to hear that. We need to get together again soon, you know? It’s been too long,” she said in her normal voice as the last remnants of sympathy for me faded away.

  “Definitely. I’ll call you later this week so we can make plans. Talk to you then.”

  I tossed my phone into my purse and then turned back to see Alex grinning at me. “I had no idea you knew people in high places, Poppy. You never cease to amaze me.”

  Brushing off his compliment, I waved my hand and said, “I wouldn’t call a clerk in the county records office people in high places, but Keri’s good people. She told me something very interesting. It seems Lee Reynolds married Jessica in May 2012, just one month after his divorce was final from Cherise Adams Reynolds.”

  Alex leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips. “So now we know who Cherise is.”

  “That’s a pretty fast turnaround, wouldn’t you say? One month he’s getting divorced from Cherise and then the next month he’s marrying Jessica. Something tells me he’s not above cheating on his wife.”

  “I think you might be right. I want to talk to people at the radio station this morning, but after I think we should go see this Cherise.”

  “How? We don’t even know her address.”

  Alex tipped his coffee cup toward his mouth to finish the last of his coffee and then tossed it in the nearby garbage can. “I’ll get Craig on finding out her address. It shouldn’t be too hard. For now, let’s get moving to the station. I’m hoping the daytime people have more to tell us about our victim than the nighttime people did.”

  We were escorted into the office of the station manager of WXSN, Kevin Nash. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but to say I was surprised by our surroundings would be an understatement. Dark brown paneling covered the walls, and even though the carpeting on the floor wasn’t shag, it certainly wasn’t anything I’d consider new. Deep brown, thick, and nearly matching the color of the walls, it made the room feel like it was about to suck us in.