Dead Air

by Mary Kennedy

  “Just name it, sugar.”

  “Do a Google search for me. Find out if there are any restaurants around Cypress Grove that serve sushi. You’ll have to check surrounding towns as well, but don’t make it too far away. Close enough that they’d do a take-out delivery to the Seabreeze.”

  Vera Mae raised her eyebrows but didn’t ask any questions. We both went into the studio, and she gave me the bio on the day’s guest. Then she zipped into the control room to organize things before my two o’clock show and fielded some phone calls from Cyrus and Big Jim Wilcox.

  The protocol for guests was always the same. Irina would greet the guest (Dr. Samuel Nitterstein, author of Keeping Sane in Crazy Times) in the lobby and walk him back to the studio.

  There’d be time for a quick bathroom break, or a cup of coffee in the green room, but once he was in the studio, he’d have to hit the ground running. I used to greet the guests myself and make small talk in the lobby, and then I realized that it was better to just meet them in the studio. That way our conversation sounded more spontaneous, less planned, and I came up with more interesting questions. It seemed to work better when I was meeting the guest at the same time the listener was.

  I didn’t think Dr. Nitterstein would say anything controversial. He’d sent me a tape he’d done for NPR, and he was well informed, if a little pedantic. No one could ever accuse him of being Mr. Charisma.

  Ever since I’d had Sanjay on the show, I’d been deluged with calls from authors peddling their self-help books. It didn’t seem to bother any of them that Sanjay had appeared on my show and been murdered that same night. They just wanted to be on the show and were giddy with excitement at the idea.

  The show with Dr. Nitterstein (who insisted I call him “Dr. Sam”) went by quickly, and the control board was lit up with calls the whole time. It was a topic everyone in Cypress Grove seemed to relate to—who knew so many people were questioning their sanity? Most of the callers were women, and my guest told me during the break that women seemed to fear losing their minds more than men did. Interesting. Was this scientifically proven or just anecdotal? Sometimes guests fudge the facts a little to make a better story.

  Were women really more prone to worries about their mental health than men were? Or were women just more willing to admit to their fears? The show ended on a high note, and Dr. Sam gave me an autographed copy of his book.

  I thanked him and practically rushed him out of the studio because Vera Mae had slipped me an intriguing note during the last commercial break. “Looking for sushi? Try the Golden Palace.” She scribbled the address of a restaurant near Stuart, Florida. Even with rush-hour traffic, I figured I could drive there in twenty minutes. I called home to leave a message for Mom and Lark. “Bringing home Chinese takeout for dinner; don’t cook.” My heart was leaping in my chest. Was the Golden Palace the break I’d been looking for?

  Chapter 29

  “Three veggie lo meins, please. With three egg rolls and one order of steamed dumplings.” It had taken me exactly seventeen minutes to reach the Golden Palace, a small restaurant in a strip mall near Stuart.

  I hoped the girl behind the counter was in a chatty mood. “Nice place,” I said idly, staring at the scratched Formica counter as though I’d never seen one before. She nodded and didn’t comment. A full assortment of sushi was staring at me from a refrigerated display case.

  “I’ll have to come back and try the sushi the next time,” I told her.

  She gave a shy smile. “It’s very good.” She slipped on some gloves and reached into the case. “I just made these. Here, try a piece.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered. I loathe sushi but managed to gulp it down in one bite, like an oyster. “Do you deliver to Cypress Grove?”

  “Cypress Grove?” She shrugged and looked down, scooping up lo mein for my order. “I’m not sure. That’s a little far away for us.”

  “Is there anyone here who would know? I’m giving a party,” I said, improvising madly. “I’d love to have the whole thing catered. Maybe thirty people.”

  “I could ask the manager, but he’s not here.” I knew from her closed expression that I wasn’t going to get any information out of her. She’d already rung up the sale, but I tried one more time. “I don’t suppose you remember if you delivered any sushi to the Seabreeze Inn last week, do you? That’s in Cypress Grove, very close to where I live.”

  “No, I have no idea. I wasn’t at work last week.” She quickly completed the transaction and handed me my change.

  “Well, thanks,” I said, forcing a smile and heading for the exit. I jumped back in the car and headed home with a bag full of take-out containers on the seat next to me. The containers had a small red dragon emblazoned on the lid.

  Mission accomplished.

  “That could be it, but I’m not sure,” Lark said half an hour later. She stared at the red dragon on the lid of the take out box for a full five seconds, chewing on her lower lip. “I do remember seeing something like this on the box in Sanjay’s room. It was some sort of a red logo, but I just can’t bring it to mind. I’m not sure it was a dragon, but it could have been. This looks about the right size.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “The maddening thing is, I can see the white container sitting right there on Sanjay’s bed, and then the image on the lid just disappears. I wonder why that is.”

  “Don’t force the memory. It will come eventually,” Mom assured her. I wondered how Mom could be so optimistic after Lark’s colorful description of her meeting with Brad Pitt at Café Rodeo. Hope springs eternal with Mom. Sometimes I think her level of optimism is almost pathological, but maybe it works in her profession. Mom always says she’s optimistic because there is no other option. The vast majority of SAG members are unemployed at any given time. If an actor didn’t have a certain degree of optimism, it would be tempting to jump off a bridge.

  Lark turned in early that night, and by ten p.m., Mom was sleeping soundly on the sofa, with Hollywood Boulevard playing on the TNT channel. I was sitting at the kitchen table going over my notes on the case when the phone rang. I grabbed it by the second ring so it wouldn’t wake up Mom. Pugsley gave a soft yip of surprise, emerging from some doggie dream, and jumped into my lap.

  “Back off,” a gravelly voice said.

  “What?” The voice was low and indistinct, and there was some static in the background. It sounded like someone was dragging a plastic comb over the receiver, maybe to disguise the voice?

  “You heard me. Back off. You know what I’m talking about.” This time the threat in the voice was unmistakable, and a chill passed through me. “Unless you want to lose your mother, your roommate, and oh, yeah, your stupid little dog.”

  I froze, every brain cell on red alert. “Who is this?” Pugsley must have sensed the urgency in my voice, because he nestled closer, looking up at me in alarm.

  “You don’t need to know that. And I’m not dumb enough to stay on the line long enough for you to trace the call, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I nearly laughed out loud. I am the most low-tech person I know, and the idea of me tracing a call is about as likely as me piloting a space shuttle. “Stop butting into things that don’t concern you, or you’re a dead woman.”

  Click.

  A dead woman? A line of goose bumps sprouted on my forearm, and the skin on the back of my neck prickled.

  “Who was that?” Mom murmured from the sofa, her voice thick with sleep.

  “Nothing,” I said, muting the television. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay,” she said agreeably, nestling back into the sofa pillows.

  I grabbed my purse and my cell phone and went out onto the balcony. Rafe had given me his cell phone number for emergencies. I thought it was silly at the time, but now I wanted to hear his warm, reassuring voice. I punched in the number, and he answered on the first ring.

  “Maggie,” he said. “What’s up?”

  For a second I was taken aback, but then I recovered. Caller ID. What
did I expect? He was a cop.

  I quickly filled him in on the phone call, wondering whether I’d been silly to call him.

  “Look at the readout,” he instructed. “What does it say?”

  “Private number.”

  “Probably a phone card, but we can try to trace it tomorrow.” A pause. “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “I’m not sure. It was sort of muffled, and there was a scratchy noise in the background.”

  “Is everything locked up tight? You need to check all the doors and windows and double-check that the security system’s turned on.”

  “I don’t have a security system.”

  A muffled curse. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “I thought this was some little backwater town, you know, like Mayberry. I figured the biggest crime you had to deal with was someone stealing newspapers off the front porch. Or maybe a kid snatching one of Aunt Bee’s apple pies off the windowsill.”

  “Do we seem like hicks to you? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Oops. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. Sorry. I just meant Cypress Grove is a quaint little place, totally different from Manhattan. I didn’t think people locked their doors here.” Rafe didn’t say anything, so I babbled on. “I guess I’m just a little shaken up, that’s all.”

  “Do you want me to send someone over?” His tone had softened. I was forgiven.

  I knew I had to be careful. I didn’t want to come across like a ditzy heroine in some silly woman-in-jep movie. That wasn’t the image I wanted to project. I wanted to be more of an Angelina Jolie, kick-ass heroine type. But the wobble in my voice probably gave me away.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Let’s just chalk it up to a prank call and leave it at that. It’s not like I’m in any real danger.”

  “That’s not true. You could be in very real danger,” Rafe said evenly. “But I’m not going to let anything happen to you; you can count on that. Lock everything up, Maggie. Do it now. I’ll catch up with you first thing in the morning, and I’ll let you know if we manage to trace that call. And Maggie . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Stop playing Nancy Drew. This isn’t a game.”

  His voice was low and intense, as if he cared what happened to me. Or was he just doing his job? PROTECT AND SERVE was the motto emblazoned on every Cypress Grove patrol car.

  Was he as attracted to me as I was to him?

  It was impossible to tell.

  I clicked the phone shut and stayed out on the balcony for a few minutes. The air was soft and balmy; a full golden moon hung in the black sky. The lyrics to “Moon over Miami” came rushing into my head, and I smiled at the incongruity of it all.

  Here I was, the perfect target, standing on the balcony overlooking a darkened garden. And I was enjoying the night air, thinking about the lyrics to a syrupy song. What if someone was lurking out there, spying on me, waiting to hurt me? I quickly went inside, double-checked the lock on the glass door, and closed the drapes.

  I debated whether or not to tell Lark and Mom about the late-night call and finally decided against it. The next day was bright and sunny, a typical Florida morning, and the threatening voice on the phone had faded from my thoughts. It could easily have been a prank call.

  Couldn’t it have? Rafe reminded me, small southern towns had their share of crime and random violence. I tried to push aside the nagging thought that the caller was serious. Drop-dead serious.

  But I told myself the best thing to do was to ignore it. Mom had left to go shopping with Lark. It was nearly nine o’clock, and I was standing on the balcony, sipping a cup of bananas Foster-flavored coffee. I was idly looking over at the Seabreeze next door when something caught my eye.

  A big ugly Dumpster. It looked like a gunmetal gray monster sitting there.

  It was invisible at eye level if you were standing on the ground, shielded by a latticework privacy fence. Had anyone checked the Dumpster for a take-out container? It seemed like a no-brainer, but evidence has gone missing before in criminal cases. Nick told me that only 1 percent of collected evidence is actually used at trial, and things get lost all the time. I wondered how I could ask Rafe whether anyone had checked the Dumpster without sounding like I was telling him how to do his job.

  I decided to do his job for him.

  I shoved my feet into flip-flops and crossed the backyard into the garden behind the Seabreeze. There’s a little place between the hedges that’s easy to slip through. I did a quick check of the lawn. No unsightly debris, no signs of a take out dinner. Holding my breath, I lifted the lid on the ugly Dumpster. Empty.

  For a moment, I was stymied, and then I saw Francesca, one of the maids, coming toward me, lugging a wastebasket. She gave me a puzzled smile, probably wondering why I was fascinated by the Dumpster. She was in her mid-thirties, attractive and slightly plump, her black-and-white uniform stretched tightly over her hips.

  “Señora,” she said, lifting the lid and skillfully tossing a bag inside.

  “Francesca, right? I live next door.” I flashed my most reassuring smile and pointed to my condo.

  “Qué?”

  “Me llamo Maggie,” I said, using up my limited knowledge of Spanish.

  “Oh, Maggie, sí,” she said politely. She nodded and headed back to the Seabreeze, but I blocked her way.

  “I’m trying to get some information on Sanjay.”

  “Sanjay?”

  “Guru Sanjay Gingii,” I repeated. “I need to find out what happened to him. He stayed here at the Seabreeze, and then he died.”

  “Died?”

  “Died. Dead. Muerto.”

  A sudden recognition flickered in her eyes and I realized she knew something about Sanjay. About the room. About that night. Something.

  She shook her head. “No sé nada. Nada.” She didn’t know anything. Or so she said. I had the feeling her English was much better than she was letting on.

  “Maybe you’re frightened, Francesca,” I said, leaning close. “Don’t be. I just need to know if anything unusual happened the night Sanjay died.” I had no idea how to translate that, so I just looked at her intently. “Anything would help, any little bit of information. Even un poco. Un poco de información.” I touched my thumb to my index finger to show that even a tiny bit would help.

  Francesca looked at me, her dark eyes wide. For a moment, I thought she was going to tell me something, and then she shook her head. “Por favor, señora.” She angled her body so she could brush by me and return to the Seabreeze. “No sé nada.”

  I decided it was time for the direct approach. “Francesca, Lark needs our help. She’s in a lot of trouble with the police.”

  “Lark?” Her dark eyes looked troubled.

  “You know Lark, my roommate, right? We live right next door.” I pointed again to our condo. “You’ve seen Lark many times.”

  She nodded her head vigorously. “Lark, sí! Very nice lady. Blond.” She smiled and touched her own dark hair. “Very simpática.”

  “Yes, that’s right; she’s very simpática.” I paused, wondering how much to say. “Francesca, listen to me carefully. The police think that Lark killed Sanjay.” I let that sink in for a moment before going on. “We both know that’s not possible. Lark is not a killer.” I shook my head from side to side, and Francesca became more animated.

  “No!” she said firmly. “Not possible. Lark is not killer.”

  “Right. Lark would never hurt anyone.” I blew out a sigh. “But we need to find out what really happened that night in Guru Sanjay’s room. You could help me. You could ask a few questions, maybe talk to the other maids? Do you understand?”

  “Sí.” Her voice was somber.

  “Maybe they saw something or heard something. You could ask them, right? Could you do that for me?” Francesca nodded, and I grabbed a pen out of my pocket. I scribbled my condo number and my phone number on a napkin that had fluttered out of the Dumpster. “Por favor.”


  “Sí. I will help you.” Francesca said softly. She nodded and hurried down the path away from me.

  “Maggie?” Rafe’s sexy voice raced over the line a few minutes later. I had just fed Pugsley and was finishing off the rest of the coffee while catching a few minutes of the Today show. “Just checking in about the phone call.”

  “Yes?” My heart was thudding with excitement. I told myself it was due to the case, but the truth is, I always felt a little buzz talking to Rafe.

  “We didn’t get anything on the call.” A beat. “But I have some interesting news about the break-in at your apartment. We managed to get a match on a fingerprint one of our techs lifted from the scene.”

  “You did? But how is that possible? Whoever attacked me that night was wearing gloves. I’m sure of it.”

  “I know, but we got a print off the handrail leading up to the outside door to the building. And it matches a partial we got from the bedroom doorknob inside your condo. They always slip up somewhere.”

  “Clever.” I was impressed. “I didn’t know you dusted there.”

  “Our techs are good. Funny how perps can get careless about leaving prints around, especially outside the building,” Rafe said. “They don’t want to wear gloves in public; it would look suspicious. So they wait until they get inside to pull on them on. A big mistake.”

  “So this guy wasn’t as smart as he thought.”

  “Except it wasn’t a guy. It was a woman.”

  “It was a woman?” My mind was reeling, and I grabbed the TV remote and turned it to mute.

  “That’s right. And here’s some more good news. I was going to get prints from you and your mother and your roommate to rule them out, and then I just took a chance and ran the crime-scene prints through the system. Bingo. There was a match. Her prints are already on file because she took out a license to carry a concealed weapon. So now we can place her at your building, and that’s all we need to bring her in for questioning.”

  I could hardly process what he was saying. Rafe kept saying her. The person who broke into my apartment and slammed me against the wall was a woman?