Cancelled Vows

by Lauren Carr

He paused at the door.

  “What you said just now was very eloquent,” she said. “Tender, even—like how badly you hurt Chelsea; how you spent years makin’ it up to her, makin’ a commitment, and givin’ her your word. But there was somethin’ very important that you left out—that you didn’t say.”

  Slowly, David turned to her. “What was that?”

  “That you love her.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Mac had concluded that unless a show was being recorded, the usual noise level inside a studio was blaringly loud. After checking to make sure the recording indicator light in the outside corridor on the thirty-sixth floor was off, he pressed through the studio door to find casually dressed crew members and well-dressed on-camera journalists rushing about like entertainers in a three-ring circus.

  Mac made his way into the control room and found Jim Wiehl standing behind his wife, who was seated at the control panel. The director and his assistant were filling two other chairs. Each one of them had a furrowed forehead and knitted eyebrows. Mac was wondering what they were concentrating on until he heard David’s voice coming from a speaker.

  “I’m not wired like that, Yvonne. What happened to you?”

  It took a full moment for Mac to realize what he was hearing.

  David’s voice continued, “You think that you can trap me, lock me up in this concrete cage called a city, and hand me a bunch of toys, and I’ll be happy? You know me better than that.”

  “You recorded the murder.” There was accusation in Mac’s tone.

  All four of them jumped and whirled around. The director ordered the assistant director to turn off the recording.

  Jim Wiehl stepped forward as if to block Mac from moving any farther into the room. “Faraday, what are you doing here?”

  Refusing to be held back, Mac dodged the executive producer and went up to the control panel. “Looking for Yvonne’s killer,” he said. “Where did you get that recording? Have you turned it over to the police?”

  “We only now found out about it,” Pam said. “In all the excitement last night, the sound technician didn’t realize what he had. He just told us, and we’ve been listening to it to see if there’s anything on it.”

  “What about the shot?” Mac asked. “The science of forensics has advanced to the point that scientists can identify a weapon based on the sound of a shot.”

  “We’ve listened to it three times and can’t hear any gunshot,” Jim said.

  The assistant director said, “But I think if we can isolate the various noises in the background, we can pick it up.”

  “Don’t do anything to the recording,” Pam said in a firm tone. “If we tamper with it in any way, when they catch Yvonne’s murderer, the recording will be tossed out of court as evidence.”

  Mac was surprised by the journalist’s order. Based on what he’d been hearing about her, he’d expected her to use the recording for her own professional gain.

  “I thought they found the murder weapon in the stairwell,” the director said.

  “Even so, this recording is evidence,” Mac said.

  “Pam’s right,” Jim said. “We’ll make a copy for ourselves and give the untouched original to the police.” He then ordered the director to contact the police department.

  “Can you make a copy for me, too?” Mac asked.

  “Sure,” the assistant director said. “I can send it directly to your cell phone if you want.”

  While the director and his assistant went to work, Jim turned back to Mac to ask him about the purpose of his visit. “We only have ninety minutes before we start recording tonight’s show.”

  “We’re doing a special tribute to Yvonne,” Pam said.

  “That’s very nice,” Mac said. “But I’m also short on time.”

  “You mean your brother,” Pam said. “David O’Callaghan. We have sources with the police department. Somehow, they’ve connected him to the murder of two police officers. Hopkins is suggesting that this makes them wonder if he had something to do with Yvonne’s murder. Maybe murder for hire. He paid Rubenstein to kill Yvonne so he could inherit her money.”

  “Your security office said that the visitor’s request for Carl Rubenstein was submitted while Yvonne was at lunch with David. So there was no way he could have sent in the form—even if he had managed to get access to the building’s intranet.”

  “How about Ali Hudson,” Jim pointed out. “Our sources say she’s on the run with O’Callaghan.”

  “She had nothing to do with Yvonne’s murder,” Pam said, shaking her head. “Ali left for lunch the same time Yvonne did. We all rode down in the elevator together. Yvonne, O’Callaghan, Lieutenant Hopkins, me, and Ali Hudson. Rubenstein was out front with reporters, causing a scene. O’Callaghan was breaking it up when Hopkins and I were going to lunch. I saw Ali cross the street.”

  Silently, Mac recalled meeting Ali as she was coming out of the building not long after that, when she claimed she’d forgotten her bag and had had to return to her office to retrieve it.

  “The police proved Rubenstein killed Yvonne,” Jim told his wife. “They found the gloves he was wearing when he shot her.”

  “But then who shot Rubenstein?” Pam turned to look at Mac. “Everyone saw you go into the stairwell after him.”

  “Rubenstein was shot from down below him in the stairwell,” Mac said. “It could have been an accident. The gun went off when the real shooter tossed it down the stairwell to get rid of it.”

  “What makes you think Rubenstein didn’t kill Yvonne?” Jim asked him.

  ”Rubenstein told security that Yvonne was going to interview him for Crime Watch,” Mac explained. “He could have been lying about the interview, but someone on the inside had to have sent the visitor’s notice to security. He didn’t have the means to do that.”

  “Why would anyone in ZNC want to kill Yvonne?” Jim asked.

  “Doesn’t it seem ironic to you that Yvonne died on the same day Walker’s body was found, and Yvonne was the last one to interview her before she disappeared?” Mac asked them.

  “I don’t like the direction this questioning is going in,” Jim said.

  “And I don’t like that some dirty cops tried to kill my brother and that now he’s running for his life,” Mac said. “Deal with it.”

  “We never even knew Yvonne was married,” Pam said. “We hadn’t even met your brother before yesterday. What makes you—”

  “But you had met Audra Walker,” Mac said. “I believe whoever killed Audra shot Yvonne and is now after Ali Hudson because she was Yvonne’s research assistant. My brother just happened to be there when they tried to kill her.”

  “Someone is trying to kill Ali?” Pam gasped while taking Jim’s hand. “Oh, that dear girl. She’s the same age as our Katie.”

  Jim swallowed. “How can we help?”

  “The truth would be a big help,” Mac said. “Sources tell me that you didn’t get along with Audra Walker, Ms. Wiehl.”

  To Mac’s surprise, Pam clasped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes instantly filled with tears.

  Jim grasped her shoulder. “We should talk someplace else. Someplace quiet.” With his arm around his wife, the executive producer escorted Mac and Gnarly out of the control room. They then made a sharp left turn to travel down a small inner hallway and through another door that opened into a room that resembled a beauty salon. The spacious room, which included two dressing rooms, a bathroom, and a rear door leading to the opposite end of the corridor, had vanity stations and a staff of cosmetologists and hairdressers.

  “This is where all the real magic happens,” Pam said. “The makeup department.”

  Four cosmetologists were busy helping guests and on-air personalities with their hair and makeup in four of the eight chairs. Ian Griffith and the other host for Crime Watch were applying their own make
up in the two other chairs.

  “When you’ve been in the business long enough,” Pam explained, “you learn how to make yourself up on your own. I can now apply my whole face in under ten minutes.”

  “But not her eyelashes,” Ian Griffith said with a laugh. “Like last night.”

  “Ian was in here cracking all of us up after my eyelash decided to take on a life of its own during my interview with Lieutenant Hopkins,” Pam said. “He followed me back here and had all of us in stitches as he made one joke after another. Who would have thought there were so many jokes one could make about eyelashes?”

  “So this is where you were when Yvonne was killed?” Mac asked.

  The smile fell from Pam’s face. “We didn’t know until Ryan Ritter came running in and told us that someone had shot her.”

  At Jim Wiehl’s suggestion, everyone decided to take a short dinner break in order to clear the room and to allow Mac to repeat his question about Audra Walker.

  “Why was Yvonne Harding interviewing a Pulitzer Prize–winning author on Crime Watch? Why weren’t you, the main attraction, doing it?” Mac asked. “Sources have told me that you were so jealous of Audra that you couldn’t see straight.”

  Taking a seat in one of the makeup chairs, Pam said, “Yes, I was jealous of Audra Walker. Very jealous. Everything was so easy for her. She came from a tiny town in Texas—much like the one I came from in Montana—and married an older man with more money than God.”

  “Unlike me,” Jim interjected.

  “I’ve since learned that there are things much more valuable than money and fame.” She kissed him on the cheek, causing a soft look filled with love to cross the producer’s face. “Audra Walker had everything I wanted when I left Montana,” Pam said. “She could drink any man under the table and be as bright as the sunshine the next day. She was skinny. Beautiful. Had two perfect, bright kids. Best book deals from the biggest publishers with the biggest advances, and awards coming out of her ears—yes, I hated her.” She choked.

  “Audra Walker was also the best friend that anyone could have asked for,” Jim said.

  Pam grasped her husband’s hand. “The type of woman who would lay her life down for you without giving it a second thought.” With a trembling hand, she wiped a tear from her eye.

  Seeing more tears coming, Jim reached for a box of tissues, which he handed to her. “Three years ago, our youngest daughter, Katie, was offered a job as an assistant to a wealthy businessman in Egypt.”

  Mac noticed Pam clutching her husband’s hands with both of hers. She appeared to age no less than ten years before his eyes.

  Jim continued. “She was so excited. The job offered the chance to travel all over Europe first class, all expenses paid for.” He sighed. “It was too good to be true.”

  “Katie went missing less than two days after she got to Egypt,” Pam said with a catch in her voice. “Our last communication with her was a desperate phone call from her cell. She said that it had all been a lie, and then we heard her screaming—right before we got cut off.”

  “We called the embassy, the State Department—”

  “Who said they could do nothing.” The angry tone in her voice was evident.

  With a nod of his head, Jim said, “We hired private investigators. They found that there was an actual white-slavery scam there. They would lure young Western women to Eastern Europe with the promise of glamorous jobs in order to abduct them and force them into becoming sex slaves for wealthy businessmen and leaders in the Middle East.”

  “Wasn’t that the subject of your book that came out the same time as Audra’s book?” Mac asked.

  “That was how I learned about the problem,” Pam said. “Because of what happened to Katie. When she got to Egypt, she was abducted by this ring. When they found out she was a virgin, they auctioned her off like an animal.”

  “The highest bidder was one of the leaders of ISIS,” Jim said. “He intended to make her one of his concubines. Because she was white and a virgin, Katie was quite a status symbol for this animal to own.”

  “Obviously, you managed to bring her home,” Mac said.

  “Thanks to Audra Walker,” Pam said with a sob.

  Jim explained. “When our private investigator told us that a group with ties to ISIS had our daughter, we went to the State Department.”

  “Who did nothing,” Pam said. “Due to their political connections with some of the parties involved in this practice that was accepted in the third world region where they had taken Katie, our State Department didn’t want to risk ruining any delicate negotiations taking place at the time.”

  Mac plunged forward. “But Audra Walker did help bring Katie home.”

  “It just so happened that at the same time, Audra Walker was being interviewed by one of our affiliates in Italy,” Jim said. “I was desperate. Since her husband, Buddy, was so wealthy, and he had so many business connections all over the world, I called Audra and explained what was happening. I asked her—begged her—to help us. Maybe, I thought, the Walkers could pay the terrorists enough money to get her back for us.” He sighed heavily. “Audra said to leave everything to her. Fewer than seventy-two hours later, we were hugging our daughter at JFK. Audra personally escorted her home on a private jet after rescuing her from a private compound in Saudi Arabia. Katie told us that Audra saved not only her but also over a dozen other young American women, some of whom were teenage girls, from this camp. Apparently, arrangements were being made to send them off to serve as concubines to terrorist-leaders all over the Middle East. Audra and a group of soldiers who must have been mercenaries brought all of those young women home.”

  “Without paying any ransom?” Mac asked.

  “Katie told us that Audra’s group blew up the terrorist compound, an act that Israel ended up getting the blame for—or the credit for, depending on who you asked,” Pam said.

  “Audra was like”—Jim shrugged—“as casual about bringing our daughter and the rest of those girls home as she would’ve been if she’d taken them all on a shopping trip.”

  “She did that, too,” Pam said. “I think the whole group cleaned out Harrods before coming back to the States—all on Audra’s dime.”

  Mac started to speak. “But—”

  “It made me so ashamed of how jealous I had been of her,” Pam said. “As cold as I had been to her, she still—she took such a risk to save my daughter. And she refused to—well, she insisted that we never tell anyone what she did. Even in my book, I never mentioned Audra Walker and what she did, because she was adamant that I never tell anyone about her involvement.”

  “I offered to pay her,” Jim said. “But she refused. Said it was just one parent helping out another. Her late husband, Buddy Walker, was the same way. You have no idea how much the Walkers gave to charity without anyone knowing—how much they kept secret.”

  Mac was stunned. When he found his voice, he asked, “How was she able to assemble such a team and break into a terrorist—”

  “Audra Walker had a talent for moving effortlessly from high society to the gutter while always fitting in,” Jim said.

  “That’s why she was such a good journalist,” Pam said. “She had connections in every walk of life all over the world. Everyone trusted her—because she could be trusted.”

  “Like when she spent more than a week in jail for refusing to give up her source,” Mac said.

  “I know a lot of journalists who would offer big talk about doing that,” Pam said, “but when it came down to it …”

  “I still don’t know how many favors Audra called in to save Katie,” Jim said. “The fact is, she did it when no one else would.”

  Mac glanced over at Pam, who was tearfully staring down at her feet. “I still don’t understand why Yvonne Harding interviewed Audra instead of you, Pam?”

  “Because …” Pam started
to say. “I couldn’t trust myself. If I got in front of a camera with her, I would have broken down and told the whole world what type of woman Audra Walker really was and she told me flat out that she did not want that to happen. We decided together that Yvonne Harding would do the interview.”

  Mac felt guilty asking his next question, but he needed to know. “Where were both of you on the night Audra Walker disappeared?”

  Jim answered without hesitation. “The police asked us about that night, so I remember. We both left the city together as soon as taping was over. We were driving upstate to our weekend place.” He added, “I guess you want to know where I was when Yvonne was shot.”

  “That would help,” Mac said.

  “I was in the control booth,” he said. “My director, assistant producer, and sound technician were with me.”

  Pam volunteered her alibi next. “I was here in makeup getting my eyelash repaired. We were right in the midst of getting it on when all the excitement broke out. Ian Griffith and a couple of guests and all of the makeup artists were in here when it happened.”

  With a sad expression, she looked down at Gnarly, who was resting his head on her lap. “You must think I’m awful. Yvonne was murdered, and there I was, fussing about my bald eye.”

  “Funny what people notice or focus on when things like that happen,” Mac noted.

  Leaving the couple in the makeup department, Mac picked up Gnarly’s leash and led the German shepherd out the rear door, which looped around the corner at the end of the corridor, past the entrance to the stairwell, and back to the elevators.

  Once they were out on the street, Mac decided to pass on taking a cab back to the hotel and to instead enjoy the brisk autumn weather. Hopefully, after going over everything that Letty, Audra’s assistant, had sent him about the Texan Romeo and Juliet, he could uncover what Audra had seen or heard at ZNC that night—and what had given her the breakthrough on the case she’d been working on her whole adult life.

  Mac was a full block away from the News Corps Building when his cell phone vibrated in its case. After digging it out, Mac read the caller ID. It was Ed.