Foul Play - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,46
the office. I was afraid it was a burglar, so I drove away and called the police. Then I went to Brian’s house and told him about Red, and he almost had a cow. He was yelling and screaming at me, telling me how I was just a chicken killer, and how I was going to ruin his ratings. I thought if Red wasn’t already made into soup he deserved a decent burial, but Brian said no, no, no. He said it wouldn’t look good. He said I’d get arrested and sent to jail for breaking into the clinic. Then, the next day, the rotten son of a creep fired me.”
Jake and Allen looked at each other and simultaneously turned and ran to the small kitchenette. Jake opened the freezer door and extracted the package marked chicken. “How could we have missed this?”
Allen shrugged. “I thought Amy had brought it in. She was always bringing us food.”
Jake unwrapped the aluminum foil and grimaced. “Veronica, how could you think Amy would make soup out of Red?”
“It did seem pretty weirdo, but you have to admit, it was a strange coincidence for her to bring that soup in.”
Jake rewrapped Red and put him back in the freezer. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
Veronica turned to Ponytail. “So you see, this was all my fault. It’s not right that Dr. Elliott’s romance went belly-up.” Veronica jiggled a little in her excitement, catching Ponytail’s full attention. “I thought, maybe, you could do another show about the real story of Red, and I could be the star. It could be an exposé. We could get that creep Turner where he lives. And Lulu would see the show and come back and everyone would live happily ever after.”
Ponytail smiled. “I think that’d be a great idea.”
It was a great idea, Jake thought, but what if Amy didn’t see it? It was a local cable station. What if Amy was far away? What if she had bigger fish to fry at nine o’clock Friday night? Lord, how he missed her. Especially at night when there was nothing else to occupy his mind, and the bed felt cold and empty next to him. He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t sleep. He looked at the digital clock on the nightstand, uttered an expletive, and thrashed under the covers. Two o’clock.
From the foot of the bed, Spot belligerently opened one eye. Now what? he seemed to say. Better not be another marathon nocturnal walk.
Jake grunted and reached for the brand-new remote. He punched up a pillow behind himself and sullenly turned on his TV. He flipped through the stations looking for something boring, and settled on a news station from Baltimore.
“… news and weather live from Baltimore, every hour on the hour,” a fat little man announced. “And now here’s the weather.”
The camera panned to a slim young woman with tousled blond curls. The woman blinked in an obvious effort to stay awake. “Here’s the weather,” she mumbled. “It’s going to rain. Big deal. Do you care?” She moved to a wall map of the United States and pointed to Kansas. “There’s a high over the Great Lakes.” She moved the pointer to Florida. “And a storm front coming in from the Rockies.” She squinted into the camera. “Is anybody out there?”
Jake had stopped breathing. It was Amy. Coming to him live, every hour on the hour, from Baltimore. The worst weather girl in the history of television. Out on her feet and cranky. His lips curved in a stiff smile.
Two hours later Jake found the station and parked next to Amy’s red car. It was a small operation. Not much more than a warehouse in a light industrial complex. The night watchman directed Jake to a door at the end of a short hall.
“Be quiet,” he said, “it’s time for the news. It’s live, you know. And watch out for the weather girl. She’s not used to keeping these hours. She’s a little … accident prone.”
Jake silently eased into the shadows at the back of the room. The dirty cement floor was littered with used coffee cups and cigarette butts. Ten or twelve tan folding chairs had been set up for an audience that didn’t exist. Two cameras focused on the brightly lit platform against the far wall. A shelf-type desk with a blue bunting skirt occupied half of the platform, the blue screen the other half. A little man with a perfectly round face sat