Stay Tuned for Murder

by Kennedy, Mary

  Chantel must have caught the wink, because she shot a dagger glare at Vera Mae. “You have to remember, Sandra, whoever made those circles—and I firmly believe it was made by our alien friends—communicate through symbols. They may not have a recognized spoken language. So the symbol, the circle, is highly significant to them. It’s up to us to come up with the correct interpretation.”

  Chantel looked pleased with herself. I was surprised she had all this information on tap, but apparently she did. “There’s a message there. We just need to be sensitive enough to understand it.”

  “And what might that message be?” Vera Mae asked from the control room. Her voice was as sugary as maple syrup, but Chantel raised her eyebrow, refusing to take the bait. I’m sure Chantel runs into a lot of nonbelievers in her line of work, and she’s probably figured out the most effective way to deal with them.

  “I hope you can tell us what it is,” Sandra piped up. “If space aliens go to all the trouble of flying down to earth and making these circles, I’d be interested in hearing what they have to say.”

  Chantel stiffened. I knew from her other appearances on my show that she hated to be put on the hot seat and she knew how to wriggle her way out of difficult questions. “I can understand your feelings, Sandra,” she said, oozing empathy. “But it’s a complex issue. No one knows for certain what the message means,” she said, hedging her bets. “They could be saying ‘we come in peace,’ or ‘join us in harmony,’ or—”

  “Or we’re gonna eat you alive?” Vera Mae chuckled. “Remember that billboard that caused such a ruckus in California? It was advertising a local gym. The picture showed an alien that looked like he was straight out of Roswell with a big head and bulging eyes. The caption said, ‘When they come, they’ll eat the fat ones first.’ People got so upset over it, they took the billboard down.”

  Chantel threw Vera Mae a death glare. “That’s simply outrageous, and ridiculous.” She was practically bouncing out of her seat in indignation, her bracelets clanging together, playing havoc with the volume meter. This time I didn’t bother pointing it out to her; I decided to just sit back and enjoy the show.

  “I have never sensed any malevolent vibes from space aliens.” She’d turned an unhealthy shade of beet red and her voice was shaky. “Not the slightest. Never!” Her voice cut through the air like a knife. “And I’ve been researching this issue for several years.”

  I wondered what kind of research Chantel could be doing on the topic of space aliens but decided to let that one ride. We were on a roll, it seemed. Vera Mae’s prediction was right on target; the audience couldn’t get enough of this stuff.

  The very next question was about Area 51, the famed “alien body” site in southern Nevada. If you believe the hype, extraterrestrials crash-landed in Roswell, and their remains were taken to Area 51, which is actually part of a military site, for examination. Some theories insist that none of the aliens survived the crash and that autopsies were performed on their bodies. Other versions claim that a few space aliens survived and joined with the United States to work together on research projects.

  Our next caller seemed unable to make up her mind what she really believed. “Just help me figure this out,” Darlene from Boca pleaded with Chantel. “If there really was a massive government cover-up, I want to write to my congressman. Unless he’s a space alien himself, of course.”

  The first hour passed quickly. Chantel sidestepped a question on supermarket bar codes. It seemed half the audience thought they were satanic and the other half thought they were part of a government plot to control our minds. Chantel left the answer open and promised to ask Michael, her trusty spirit guide, for some information.

  We were nearly into a break when Lurleen from Darien asked about telekinesis. “I wonder if it’s a trick, or if some people just have learned a way to control objects,” she asked. “I think I may have a poltergeist in my house because things are moving around all the time. Sometimes it’s big things, like a chair, and sometimes it’s something small, like a salt and pepper shaker.”

  “Telekinesis is a respected area of scientific research,” Chantel said. “Of course, movies have blown the idea all out of proportion, and a lot of these poltergeist claims are false. They make for good entertainment, but they’re not scientifically valid.”

  “You know, a lot of studies show that a child or adolescent is often behind these incidents,” I broke in. “The parents refuse to believe that their little darling is acting out to get attention, and the next thing you know, they’ve hired a team of psychic investigators to rig up cameras and audio equipment throughout their house. The results are always inconclusive. But once you remove the kid from the home, the events magically stop. I think that says it all.”

  “That’s sometimes the case,” Chantel acknowledged. “And it’s unfortunate that the whole paranormal field is tainted by these charlatans. It casts aspersions on all of us. There will always be gullible people, very suggestible, who buy into hoaxes and scams.”

  “So are you saying there is such a thing as telekinesis? Has anyone ever proven it?” Lurleen huffed.

  Chantel was silent for a moment. “I can assure you, it’s a very real phenomenon.” She turned to stare at me. “And I can prove it, if you just give me a moment.”

  Vera Mae raised her eyebrows. Her hand had been hovering over the button that would launch the next commercial, but she drew it back, her eyes wide.

  “Do you see that ballpoint pen, Maggie?” Chantel gestured to a pen lying on the console between us.

  “Yes, of course.” I wondered where she was going with this.

  “Am I touching it in any way?”

  “No, you’re not.” I was starting to feel a little foolish, like I was David Copperfield’s assistant, a foil for whatever trick Chantel was going to try to pull off in the studio.

  “I want you to watch it carefully. And once I begin, I will need complete silence. Try to keep your mind a blank, so you don’t interfere with the process.”

  The process?

  And then Chantel’s expression changed imperceptibly, almost as if she were a shape-shifter, ready to take on a new persona. It was like someone had paralyzed every muscle in her face, and her eyes suddenly became dilated, giving her a slightly crazed look. She stared straight ahead, looking like a wide-awake corpse in a zombie flick.

  I waited, watching.

  She sat perfectly still for several seconds, with her nostrils quivering like a Thoroughbred’s. Then she inhaled a deep breath that seemed to come from somewhere in the depths of her being.

  “Are you ready?” she asked in a flat voice. Her right hand was lying flat on the console, the fingers splayed, wide apart. For one crazy moment, I thought I felt heat waves, like little bolts of energy, darting out from her fingertips. But that was just my overactive imagination at work, right?

  I gave myself a mental head slap. Get a grip, Maggie!

  I smiled. “Ready for what?” I asked in my most professional voice. I caught a flash of movement, and my heart stuttered. The pen! What was going on with the pen? “The pen,” I said stupidly. “I think . . . I mean, it can’t be, but it looks like it’s—”

  “Holy moley, it’s moving!” Vera Mae yelled from the control room. I stared at her through the glass, and her mouth was open wide, like she was one of those characters in an Edvard Munch painting.

  And then I looked back at the pen. It was moving. No doubt. It was moving! Slowly, at first, but then it seemed to gather speed.

  I still had my eye on the pen when it skittered across the console, wobbled back and forth on the edge for a long, heart-thudding moment, and then dropped straight into my lap.

  The pen. In my lap. As if a ghostly hand had placed it there.

  I gasped out loud, just as we went to commercial break.

  Chapter 12

  “How in the world did you do that?” Vera Mae flipped open her mike to talk to us. I flinched as a new House of Beauty commercial, c
omplete with cheesy jingle, floated through the studio. “Be kind to your hair, because it’s hair today, gone tomorrow.” There was a syrupy version of the theme song from Doctor Zhivago playing in the background. The ad copy made absolutely no sense, but with Irina, it doesn’t have to.

  Note to self: remind Cyrus to hire a real copywriter. Soon.

  Chantel stared at Vera Mae through the window and shrugged. “How did I do it?” She gave a little toss of her head and inspected her long, talonlike fingernails. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a power, a gift.”

  “It’s pretty impressive, but I sure wish you could explain it to me,” Vera Mae persisted.

  “I’m in the dark as much as you are, Vera Mae. I don’t really do anything, you see. I just concentrate and allow things to happen. That’s the key to understanding the workings of the universe. I am but a channel, a vessel.”

  Chantel put her right hand on her ample bosom and looked skyward. She either had heartburn or she was contemplating the mysteries of the intergalactic system. “I am but a drop in the ocean of life.”

  Okay, I get it. She’s only a channel, a vessel, a drop in the ocean. I felt a bubble of irritation rising in me at her mock-humble act. She was being as cryptic as Michael the spirit guide had been at the séance. What was her shtick for today? Chantel the wisewoman? Or maybe she was in her guru-oracle-psychic-medium mode. Chantel seemed to be a jack-of-all-trades in the metaphysical world, the ultimate multitasker.

  I picked up the pen and turned it over in my hand a few times, taking a close look.

  “It’s an ordinary pen, right, Maggie?” Chantel had her Cheshire cat face on, her enormous eyes focused on me. I wished I could figure out a way to unmask her, but nothing came to me. I was tempted to pocket the pen, but I didn’t dare. That would be too obvious. Better to play dumb for the moment and act like I was going along with her.

  “Yes, it certainly seems to be”—I waited a beat—“perfectly ordinary.” I shifted the pen from one hand to the other, sure that I was missing something.

  The only thing I noticed was that it felt a little heavier than most ballpoint pens, but other than that, I couldn’t see anything different about it. I took a closer look. It had an attractive silver-colored casing; maybe that was what added the weight. In any case, I bit back a sigh. I was forced to agree with her; it looked completely normal.

  “Do you think I could learn to do that?” Vera Mae asked from the control room. “I’d sure like to wow the girls at the next Beef ’n’ Beer down at the fire hall.”

  Chantel wrinkled her nose. “I doubt you have any telekinetic powers, Vera Mae. It’s something you’re born with. If you haven’t noticed a sensitivity to paranormal events up to now, it’s fairly certain that you don’t have the gift. As I like to say, ‘when you have the gift, you feel it in your gut.’ ”

  “Oh, darn. Well, I was afraid you were gonna say that,” Vera Mae said. Her face sagged for a moment, and then she brightened. “It looks like I’ll just have to get through life without the gift.”

  Vera Mae is an incurable optimist and never stays discouraged for long. She had one hand on the dial and one eye on the clock, ready to whisk us back to the second hour of my show. “You know,” she said in a chatty tone, “I always did like that old TV show Bewitched, with Elizabeth Montgomery. It’s still going strong in reruns. I wish I could just twitch my nose like Samantha and—oops, here we go, Maggie. We’re live!” she said suddenly, pointing at me.

  “And we’re back,” I said quickly, sliding right into the next round of callers. It’s funny—once the show starts, you get into a sort of rhythm and you can practically go on autopilot. Most of the calls were for Chantel, and I hate to admit it, but she did a good job fielding them. She knows a lot of paranormal mumbo jumbo and has a knack for coming across as warm and insightful with the callers. The listening audience couldn’t seem to get enough of her; the lines were jammed the entire time.

  I managed to look interested during the second hour, nodding and making the appropriate noises while I zoned out. I let my mind play over Althea’s murder. How sad and senseless it all was. Who had killed her, and why? Probably the first thing to decide was whether the killer was someone she knew. An intruder? Someone who had a grudge against her? A random act of violence?

  It seemed like it was unplanned, a crime of opportunity. After all, the killer hadn’t brought a weapon to the scene, and poor Althea was bludgeoned to death with her own fireplace poker. It made me shudder just to think of it.

  That would surely indicate what the profilers call a disorganized crime scene. If someone was breaking in to rob Althea, wouldn’t they have brought a weapon? Or something to restrain her with?

  What was the motive? There couldn’t be much of value in the historical-society building. I wondered whether the killer had bothered to wipe up his prints, or whether he’d left trace evidence at the scene. If the crime scene was disorganized, as I suspected, that meant the killer had been careless and could have left DNA evidence scattered all around.

  But back to the killer. It appeared that Althea had opened the door to let him in, because there was no sign of forced entry. But that didn’t necessarily mean that she knew him. Cypress Grove is a small, friendly place. When I first moved here from Manhattan, I was shocked to discover that a lot of people don’t bother to lock their doors. Day and night. So it wouldn’t have been unusual for Althea to open the door to a complete stranger. He might have pretended that he wanted to visit the historical society.

  Or the killer might have been hiding inside, waiting for her to return home. Maybe he’d been stalking her, and followed her home? I wondered whether Rafe had managed to track down Althea’s movements that day. It would be interesting to know where she’d gone and whom she’d talked to. And I wondered if she’d been killed very late at night or in the early-morning hours.

  I suddenly thought of Trevor McNamara, the real estate developer I’d met at Ted’s. I was positive that he was hiding something, and he’d specifically mentioned knocking on the doors of the old Victorian mansions downtown. But if he’d been involved in Althea’s murder, why would he broadcast the fact that he’d been in the area? That wouldn’t be a very smart move on his part, and I had the feeling Trevor was a shrewd guy.

  I was getting nowhere with this train of thought, and I forced myself to concentrate on Chantel, who was taking a call about supermarket bar codes. It must have been a doozie of a question, because I could see Vera Mae allowing herself a small eye roll in the control room.

  If you haven’t heard the controversy about supermarket bar codes, here’s the CliffsNotes version: a tiny, demented group of folks think that bar codes actually contain hidden Satanic messages. The first time I heard this, I felt like I’d officially entered the Twilight Zone.

  But wait. There’s more. Another group of conspiracy theorists claim the bar codes are part of a giant government plot to control our lives. How? This part gets sticky, and I’ve never fully understood it. I think it has something to do with mind control and the power of suggestion. There might be other, equally wacky bar code conspiracy theories out there, but these seem to be the two most popular ones.

  It was scary to think we were giving them some validity by even discussing them on the air today. This was surely a new low in my show’s history, and I thought of Kevin’s comment about the National Enquirer. Maybe that was where we were headed. Tabloid on the air.

  The trend seemed to be headed for the lowest common denominator—the more sensationalistic the topic, the better. I felt my spirits plummet, realizing that schlock sells. Today’s ratings would probably be through the roof. And Cyrus would be delighted. Not with me, but with Chantel. What implications would that have for my On the Couch show? They certainly couldn’t be good. I bit back a sigh.

  The rest of the show zipped by quickly, and before I knew it, I was reading a thirty-second promo for the upcoming time capsule ceremony and thanking Chantel for being my guest. />
  “I’d love to come back and take more questions from your listeners. Anytime,” she gushed.

  I just bet you would! I was sure she was angling for her own show on WYME, and if Cyrus thought the ratings would support it, he’d hire her in a minute. Did the station really need two afternoon talk shows?

  I had no job security, and I was already halfway through my yearly contract. If Chantel really wanted to cut into my territory, there was no way to stop her. She said she’d come to Cypress Grove for seclusion to work on her next book, but maybe there was more to the story. She seemed to love the attention of being a local media star, and maybe she figured a WYME gig was a stepping-stone to bigger things.

  Moments later, I was heading to the break room, when Irina stopped me in the hall. She was glowing with excitement as she introduced me to a young man wearing khakis and a white long-sleeved shirt.

  “My English teacher,” she said proudly. “Mr. Simon Brent. This is Dr. Maggie Walsh,” she said formally.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, eyeing Simon Brent. Her English teacher? A little bell went off in my head. He was an attractive guy, broad shoulders, great smile, but he didn’t look like an English teacher. He was male-model good-looking, like an English teacher you might see on a CW show. And since when was Irina attending classes at the local university? This was news to me.

  “I had no idea you were studying literature, Irina.” The thought of Irina tackling the complete works of Dostoyevsky or Henry James boggled the mind. I wondered whether her instructor had ever read any of her House of Beauty commercials.

  “Oh, no, it is not the literature I am studying. I am taking the English as a third language class.” Irina giggled and clapped her hand over her mouth. “Wait—I mean second language. English as the second language, as they say.” She nudged Simon playfully on the arm. “But Simon—I mean Mr. Brent—thinks my English is so perfect, there is no need for more of the instruction.”