Jeopardy in High Heels (High Heels #12) - Gemma Halliday Page 0,75

the right word."

"I'll tell you what the word is," Marco said, swiveling in his seat to face me. "Motive."

"For Mae?" I asked.

"No, for Mr. Aunty Mae. Rupert Blick. Didn't you say you saw him argue with Dog at the taping?"

I nodded. "We did. Right before the show started."

"Blick said it was because Dog wasn't taking the show seriously enough," Dana added.

"But what if it was for another reason?" Marco offered. "What if he'd seen his wife go into Dog's dressing room for that little quickie?"

"This wasn't exactly a crime of passion," I reminded him. "I mean, I doubt Blick walks around with antifreeze in his pockets."

Marco frowned. "Okay, so maybe it wasn't that quickie that sent him over the edge. Maybe it was another one. Maybe Mae and Dog weren't as discreet as they thought they were. I mean, you found the love letter. What if someone else had seen it too? Or overheard something, and they clued Blick in?"

I nodded, digesting that idea. "It's certainly possible. I overheard Blick and Mae arguing at the memorial just now too. Blick seemed to guess that Tina's article about a secret lover was referring to his wife."

"Ha!" Marco said, stabbing a finger in the air. "See! Blick did know."

"Just because he guessed it after the fact, that doesn't mean he knew while Dog was alive," I pointed out.

"And, I hate to burst your bubble," Dana said, "but it wasn't as if Blick and Mae had an overly close relationship to begin with. I mean, could I see Blick feeling betrayed that his wife was cheating? Of course. But killing over it?" She shook her head. "That seems extreme, given the dismissive way he talked about his wife."

Marco pouted for a moment before switching gears. "Okay, so maybe it wasn't about jealousy. Maybe it was about Dog leaving?" Marco offered. "Maddie, didn't you say that Dog told Mae he wanted to run away together? Leave all this behind?"

"Yes," I said, seeing where he was going with this. "And if Dog was a big hit in the ratings for Blick, that might have been enough to make him angry. Maybe those contract negotiations weren't going quite as he'd planned."

"Maybe it was a case of, if Blick's network couldn't have Dog, nobody could?" Marco said.

"I don't see how it helps Blick to have a dead Dog any more than Dog just leaving," Dana pointed out.

Marco shrugged. "I don't know about that. Blick's certainly getting a whole lot of free publicity over it. You saw how he was milking it at the memorial."

He had a point. Dog's name was on everyone's lips right now.

"And," Marco added, "if Dog and Mae really were going to run off together, that means Blick was losing the Aunty Mae franchise altogether. This way, at least he's still got her. And my guess is her ratings will be soaring with sympathy viewers for a while."

I could see Dana's frown, as if she didn't like the idea of her boss being a killer, even if Marco was making a tidy case for it.

"I don't know," Dana said as she merged onto the freeway. "What if it was Mae who killed Dog?"

Marco gasped. "Aunty Mae? Why? She said she was in love with him."

"Right, but what if he didn't feel the same way?" Dana said, eyes cutting to me in the mirror again. "We only have Mae's word that the feeling was mutual. The love letter was from her to him. I mean, what if Dog was just having a little fun? To him it was just a fling, and Mae found out he wasn't as passionate about her as she thought."

"Or, true to form, maybe Mae discovered Dog being unfaithful to her," I added.

Dana nodded. "Right! Mae finds out, it breaks her heart, and she decides to exact her revenge."

"She doesn't want suspicion surrounding her show, so instead she visits him on the set of another show. She spikes his drink and walks away," I finished.

"I don't know," Marco said, still frowning. "Aunty Mae seems too wholesome to be a killer. Too sweet. Too perky."

"It's not natural perk," Dana told him. "It's antidepressants and vodka."

"No!" Marco looked like someone had just told him Adam Lambert was straight. "Are you sure?"

"Sorry, hon," I said, putting a hand on his arm.

He sighed. "But she did bake the cookies, right? I mean, those are her great-grandmother's recipe from the farm, right?"

I didn't have the heart to tell him they were much more likely from Pepperidge