Ten
Thursday found Ricki sitting at Becca’s kitchen table, discussing a plan of attack in solving the murder of Kari Olson. They didn’t have much information to go on as the media hadn’t really reported on anything yet. All that Ricki could learn from her brother was that Kari had been hit on the head and drown in the lake. There weren’t any bruises or cuts or anything on her body indicating a fight had occurred. Her car was still in the parking lot of Hilltop Inn, purse, cell phone, car keys still missing.
“So, that must mean whoever hit her on the head either knew her or took her by surprise,” Ricki said.
“It was dark. Someone jumped out and whacked her on the head. It’s not hard to imagine.” Becca held a fidgety Megan on her lap as she tried to eat a bowl of Cheerios. Rumpus stared up at her, waiting for one of those toasty o’s to fall to the floor where he would rescue it with his mouth.
“It could’ve been random, but let’s say it wasn’t. Only a few people in the area knew her. That leaves a small circle of suspects.” If Kari was new in town and didn’t know anyone other than Marty, that would make it easier for Ricki to figure out who the murderer was. She took out pen and paper and began writing a list of names. “Marty knew her quite intimately and…” That last part poked at her heart. She thought she had gotten used to the idea that Marty had moved on with his life. Until she had seen him with Kari. It was a shock to the system. Seeing him with her reopened that wound, and it felt like the breakup had happened all over again.
“Maybe Marty did it.”
Ricki stared blankly at Becca. “Why would he do it?”
“The boyfriend was conveniently out of town when his lovely fiancée was offed? Come on. Sounds classic to me.”
“I read the love and worry on his face.” Ricki doodled on the paper, avoiding the questioning look she was certain Becca had in her eyes. “Some things can’t be faked.”
“Out of cell range is all I’m sayin’.”
“Jim what’s his name said he had known her for years.”
“Jim, the producer who smelled nice?”
“That would be him. Although, after I saw the way he ordered everyone around, I don’t think he’s so dreamy anymore.”
Becca took a sip of her coffee. “Looks aren’t everything.”
“I don’t think the other producer knew her, but we’ll put Ned on the list of potential suspects along with Taryn and some chick named Ricki Rydell.”
Becca studied her. “Why put your name on that list?”
“Steve already put me on that list.” Ricki explained to Becca how the questions he asked her implied she might have been hiding something. Maybe she was only being paranoid or feeling guilty for the fight she had had with Kari on the night she died, but it was hard not to feel paranoid when a detective questioned her the way he did.
“I thought Steve was good friends with your brother.”
“Looks like he doesn’t let friendship get in the way of a murder investigation. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because I didn’t do anything wrong, except fight with her.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about, so quit worrying.”
“I’m not worried. Do I look worried? Can we get back to this?” In her notebook, Ricki left enough space behind each person’s name for the details of where they were and what they were doing on the night Kari had died. “Marty said he was out of town and out of cell phone range and hadn’t spoken to her in a few days. Unless he was lying, like you seem to think, and can’t cough up a good alibi, I can cross his name off the list of suspects.”
“Are we going to go on some wild goose chase like we did before?”
“No, we probably won’t have to.”
“Bummer. That was a lot of fun, especially when you got caught spying on the naughty librarian.”
“I’m only here for your entertainment, aren’t I? Now, who else? Taryn. I thought I heard her say she was out of town for a prior commitment.”
“Another convenient excuse.”
“We’ll have to check her alibi. But how am I going to do that without seeming obvious?”
“The only way you can do that is not to be obvious.”
“That’s brilliant, but how I do that?”
“Do I look like a detective, inspector Rydell?”
Ricki glared at her. Becca rested her chin on her hand and stared off into space while Ricki tapped the end of the pen on the table, thinking.
“What if I pull her into my investigation, making it look like she’s a helper so she won’t get suspicious? That way, I can have instant access to the producers, herself, and get the background on Kari.”
“But I thought you said she didn’t know Kari.”
“That’s what she said, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. I need to find a way to get back into that studio.”
“It makes sense to start with the dreamy guy who knew her and leave Taryn out of it for now.”
That wasn’t what Ricki was thinking. Ricki was thinking she should start with the one who knew her best. “Or I could ask Marty.”
Becca gasped. “You can’t do that. He just lost his fiancée. It doesn’t matter if you had a relationship with him in the past. He’s hurting right now, and your presence isn’t going to make things any better. Promise me you won’t seek him out.”
“His fiancée was murdered. Don’t you think he would want to know who did it?”
Becca shook her head. “No, honey. I will support you in just about anything but not this. Stay away from him. Let him heal.”
“There’s nothing wrong with offering condolences. I’ve known him most of my life, anyway.” Sure, Ricki could see Becca’s point, but if she weren’t so desperate to solve another mystery, she would follow her friend’s advice.
“It doesn’t matter if you were friends before you were lovers.” Becca cupped her mouth with both hands and shouted: “His fiancée was murdered. Do. Not. Go. There.”
Ricki rolled her eyes and sighed. “Okay, enough already. Let’s talk about something else, then.”
Except for the sound of baby Megan smacking the table with her little hands, the house got painfully quiet. Distracted by taking notes, Ricki was unaware that Becca sat there staring at her. She raised her head and stared back. Did she have something on her face? Something in her teeth? Why was Becca staring? Ricki raised a questioning eyebrow.
“You probably don’t want to talk about the videos, do you?”
Well, to be honest, Ricki would rather have forgotten about them altogether, but even a new mystery to solve couldn’t distract her from those images. But did she want to talk about them? Um, no. “I forgot about them completely. Next topic.”
“Liar. I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re fibbing.”
“What’s there to talk about. Except lunch. Do you want to go out or should I order take-out? I’m in the mood for curry. There’s a new Indian restaurant down on Main Street. Game?”
Becca laughed. “You’re so horrible at skirting the issue. I just ate a bowl of cereal, and I hate curry. On second thought, I could go for pizza.” Rumpus whimpered and licked his chops. “I’ll even give you a piece of the crust, big boy.”
“I’m not skirting any issue.” Ricki swiped through her contacts for the number to Paesano’s Pizza & Subs. “What do you want on your pizza?”
“I want a white pizza. Now, what about the videos?”
Ricki pressed the phone to her ear and raised a finger, waiting for someone to answer the phone. “Size?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Large it is.”
Becca made faces at Ricki while she placed the order, trying to make her laugh. As soon as Ricki hung up, she brought the subject of the videos up again.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Ricki refilled her glass with water. “What’s the point, anyway? The damage is done.”
“Don’t you want to know who’s sabotaging your career?”
“A few views on an obscur
e YouTube channel hardly sabotages my career.” She refilled Rumpus’ water bowl before returning to the table. “Okay, so it was two different channels. Big deal.” Even Ricki didn’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth, but she figured if she said it often enough she’d eventually believe it.
“Well…”
“Well, what?”
“There’s something else.”
Ricki cocked her head to the side, squinting one eye. “Something else? Like what?”
“Let me clean up Megan first and put her down for a nap so we can talk like grownups.”
Becca was notorious for dropping bombs like that and then walking away before they went off, leaving Ricki waiting for the explosion. But far be it for her to stand in the way of Becca’s motherly duties. She would have to wait to find out what her BFF was on about.
“I’ll clean up the kitchen and get ready for the pizza, I guess.”
While Becca took care of Megan, Ricki opened the door to the fenced backyard to let Rumpus out to play. She could keep an eye on him through the kitchen window while loading the dishwasher. She grabbed a couple cans of soda from the garage refrigerator, set the table, and paid the delivery driver but still no sign of Becca. Maybe she had fallen asleep while rocking the baby. Ricki crept upstairs in search of.
“Pizza’s here.”
Becca put a finger to her lips and closed the bedroom door. “Cross your fingers she stays asleep.”
Rumpus barked at the backdoor, prompting Ricki to race downstairs to let him in before he woke the baby. Inside, he gave a hearty shake and ran straight to his water dish until he caught a whiff of the pizza. Ricki blocked him from climbing on the chair. “I taught you better than that. Sit!”
“Come on, you guys. Keep it down. So help me if you wake her up.” Becca placed the baby monitor on the table and helped herself to a slice of the hot and gooey pizza. “Just let me have an hour of uninterrupted face-stuffing. Now, gimme, gimme, gimme.”
Ricki’s patience was wearing thin. “Can we get back to this something else you were referring to?”
“Because I was curious, and Megan couldn’t sleep, I surfed the web and found more than just videos about you.”
Ricki was painfully aware of her haters, but after a few lectures from her agent, she got rid of the Google alerts and quit reading reviews. This wasn’t new to her. “That’s part and parcel to being in the public eye.”
“Right. I mean, I knew about the cyber stalker and the hate-fans, but this is different.”
Ricki finished chewing the piece of pizza in her mouth and braced herself. “How different?”
“It seems someone set up a website and is leaking bits of personal information about you…and Marty.”
Ricki’s stomach dropped along with her jaw. “What?”
“It’s only been there for a couple of days. So far, they only posted a few emails you wrote after you two broke up. I thought you should know.”
She took a couple of deep breaths, letting this sink in. “It could be fake. There’s so much fake stuff online.”
Becca pushed the can of soda toward her. “I have something stronger to add to that if you need it.”
“What’s the web address?” Ricki whipped out her phone and logged on.
Becca paused mid-chew and glanced away. “Google Ricki Rydell sucks.”
Ricki dropped her phone on the table. “Are you freaking kidding me?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she typed the keywords in and scanned through the results. “What the—?”
“Ah. You found it.”
She skimmed the blog posts, trying to digest them all in one bite. Right before her eyes were three emails that she had placed in a folder marked Marty in her email account. After they had broken up, she held onto his messages until she was ready to let go of them. She had completely forgotten about the folder until now. She read the banner at the top of the page: “I’ll be adding one new email or personal anecdote every day until I run out.”
“Is it real or fake?”
“Unfortunately, those are the real emails I had sent him right after he left.” She dropped her head to the table and wrapped her arms over her head. “This can’t be happening.”
“I didn’t know you were so bad off as that. I wish you would’ve confided in me at the time, but that’s neither here nor there now.” Becca squeezed Ricki’s hand. “You going to be okay, honey?”
“I just want to know why, that’s all.”
Ricki felt a malaise wash over her. Someone was more than sabotaging her career; someone was sabotaging her life.
Eleven
To hell with what everyone thought about Ricki and her hermit ways. She needed to escape from the world, at least until things calmed down. Who knew when that was going to happen? Things were just starting to heat up. The local media finally began reporting on Kari’s murder in an effort to help the police find the killer. An anonymous hotline had been set up and a reward was being offered to anyone with information about the murder. The police still couldn’t determine if it was a random act or done by someone who knew the victim. There was a business convention at the hotel sitting next to Hilltop Inn that weekend, adding to the confusion. Some speculated that if it were a random act it could have been an out-of-towner who had killed her. Because there were over two-hundred attendees at the convention, it made it harder for the police to narrow their search. But Ricki didn’t believe it was a random act and was going to approach her investigation from that angle.
So far, she hadn’t been able to get in touch with any of the suspects on her list. She found the number to the television studio on their new Facebook page, but no one answered the phone. The studio hadn’t set up a voicemail, so she couldn’t even leave a message for them to get back to her. As a last resort, she sent Taryn an email, saying she wanted to get together and talk. Something must have happened in transit because the message completely disappeared from her Sent folder.
Marty was on his way to Kalamazoo, Michigan with Kari’s body. According to a brief news segment, her family wanted her buried in her hometown. But before he left, she sent him a simple condolence email. She would have preferred a card and flowers, but she didn’t know where he was living or, according to Becca, if it was appropriate to send them. Her motive for contacting him was purely business. She only wanted to solve the crime. Okay, she wanted to be a good friend, too.
But then there was the whole mess with the videos—the comment section turning into a cesspool of trolls picking apart Ricki’s many faults, including her badly written books. The website displaying personal details of her life that only she, Marty, and her internet service provider would have known about, had a dedicated group of followers eager for the next leak. Their comments were so scathing that Ricki had to stop reading them. To preserve her sanity, she vowed to stop looking at the site altogether. She had curled up under the covers and had a good cry, with Rumpus comforting her as best he could by crawling under the covers with her.
Once she was all cried out, she wondered how on earth someone had gotten hold of those emails. The first thought was that Marty had shown Kari their communications to show how horrible Ricki was as a girlfriend. The second thought was that she snooped through his laptop or phone to see if he was hiding anything from her.
Then there was the third option. That morning, she checked her email to see if anyone had reached out to her yet and found an opened email dated the day before. She hadn’t checked her email in days. Hiding under the covers limited her range of motion. It was from her agent, Tracy. The email was an apology, expressing her regret that she ended their last call together so abruptly. She said she had to do it because she didn’t want to have to break the bad news to her while her family was visiting her. That was the first couple of paragraphs. The rest of the email was an admonition that she needed to go into damage control and tackle this thing head on because the publisher was more than a little upset with what had happened. They wanted details about
the show and why she made a total fool of herself. Those weren’t the words they used, but Ricki was smart enough to read between the lines. And, of course, Tracy asked about the website exposing Ricki’s dirty laundry and the videos on YouTube.
This burned her britches. With the exception of breaking the bracelet during the live taping of the show, Ricki had no control over anything else. It wasn’t like she gave the emails between her and Marty to some stranger to upload to the internet. It wasn’t like she had asked someone to record the humiliating experience of the talk show for the whole world to see. She thought it was only a regional show and its reach wouldn’t stretch any farther than the tri-county region. As for someone recording the fight she had with Kari in the parking lot, well, they were in a public space. It could have been anyone. To blame it on her was unfair. What kind of damage control Tracy and her publisher expected her to do, remained to be seen. She was certain a conference call was in her future. Tracy said the publisher wanted to know as much about the situation as possible so they could be proactive instead of reactive if things got any worse for Ricki.
Was it really that bad? Ricki had been hiding in the house for a few days, but the world couldn’t have fallen apart in that short of time, could it?
She waited until she calmed down to respond to Tracy’s email. But what worried her more than anything was how that email was opened before she had even seen it. Ricki’s experience with technology went no further than the programs she used to write, her phone, e-mail, and setting up her DVD player. She wasn’t a tech genius, but this had all the earmarks of a virus or a hacking. Either way, it scared her, especially if someone had hacked into her email. She had personal communications from years ago stored in folders, financial transactions with bank account numbers and tax ID numbers, and copies of her tax returns in her account.
Wake Up to Murder (A Ricki Rydell Mystery Book 2) Page 7