by Leslie Kelly
“I guess he didn’t care so much,” she muttered aloud as she stood in her room at the Little Bohemie Inn. Digg hadn’t sought her out at all, not even when he’d thought she’d been fired.
So much for Mr. Hero. Once their friendship had been exposed, he’d covered himself, making sure he didn’t get ejected from the game by steering clear of Jacey. She didn’t know whether she was more disappointed or heartbroken.
Heartbroken would involve her heart. So she refused to think that, even though in her deepest thoughts, she suspected that’s what this ache, this emptiness, meant.
It was dinnertime and the rest of the cast and crew were downstairs eating a meal the studio had had brought in. They couldn’t take a long break tonight because they’d be taping well into the evening.
Tonight would determine the final four—the four contestants who would go on to the last episode of Killing Time. The last one standing that final night would walk away with a cool million. Either the killer, who’d fooled and killed off all the other players in the game. Or else one of the contestants, who’d survived long enough to finger the Derryville Demon during the last, dramatic confrontation.
One of the four would be eliminated after the final quiz during the last episode. Then the last three would face off, questioning each other, going over the case, trying to figure out the killer while also trying to trick the other players into naming the wrong person.
If both players guessed wrong, the killer won the prize. If a player named the killer, however, and put all the pieces of the entire puzzling case together, that person would get the money. It couldn’t just be guesswork. The winner had to actually have figured out the means, motive and opportunity for every crime.
She wondered how Digg would fare, if he’d survive, if he’d come out of this adventure a millionaire. If he’d give her a second thought once he was gone. “Probably not. I’ll be a distant memory chalked up as a notch on the new fireman’s hose he’ll buy with the million bucks.”
“Actually,” a voice said from the doorway, “there will be a new fireman’s hose if I win. I plan to help refurbish the station. But if anyone cut a notch in it, it wouldn’t be much good at putting out fires, would it?”
Jacey closed her eyes, wondering why Digg was here, entering her room, closing the door behind him. But oh, so very glad he was.
“What are you doing? You know we can’t be alone together.”
Digg shrugged. “Everyone’s at dinner. And I assume the crew’s rooms aren’t wired?”
Jacey shook her head, thankful for that much. This was one room in the inn where they actually could talk in private.
“I’ve been trying to get a minute alone with you since Thursday.” He stepped closer, running the backs of his fingers over her cheeks. Damn, if there were tearstains there, she’d just have to jump off a bridge or something.
“Jacey, I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“You are?” Her voice shook. She couldn’t help it. “I wasn’t even sure you knew. Or cared.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her temple. “You really need to work on your self-confidence issues.”
Her jaw dropped. “Me? I don’t have issues. I’m a ball-breaker, not scared of anything.”
He smiled slightly. “Except genuine emotion. A real relationship. The possibility that nice guys do exist and the tough girl can fall in love.”
She tried hard to hold herself stiff, though her entire body wanted to melt against him. “You think I’m in love with you?”
He nodded, kissing her cheek, then her nose, then the corner of her mouth. “I know you are.” Then, before he moved his lips over hers, he murmured, “Because I love you, too.”
Then he was kissing her, touching her with his mouth and body, even as he’d touched her with his words. Jacey wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him tight, kissing him unreservedly, with all the emotion she’d kept locked up inside herself forever.
When the kiss finally ended, she looked up at him, losing herself again in his serious brown eyes. “You could have waited and told me this after the show. I hate that you’re risking yourself for me.”
He shrugged, completely unconcerned. “You’re worth any risk, Jacey. And they know if you go, I’ll go too.” Then he gave her a cocky smile and lifted a teasing brow. “And I definitely cannot go.”
She tilted her head in confusion. “If I go, you…?” Then the truth started to dawn. “Oh, my God, you’re the reason they brought me back. You threatened to quit.”
“Something like that, but not in so many words. Caro went over Watson’s head.”
As she’d suspected, Caro had been involved. But she’d never imagined Digg had.
He’d stood up for her. In all her life, Jacey had never had anyone stand up for her, want to fight for her, to be a hero for her. She stood up on tiptoes and kissed him again, thanking him without words for his trust, his support. And his love.
“Can we really make this work?” she asked, a bit of self-doubt creeping in. “In the real world?”
“They have firemen in L.A., don’t they?” he asked.
His supreme confidence renewed her own. “And they have studios in New York,” she answered with a big grin.
Suddenly, everything seemed possible. The future rolled out in front of them, endless and unexplored. “When do we go?”
“Wednesday morning,” he replied without hesitation.
She nibbled her lip. “We can leave now. Just so, you know, if you ever doubted why I stayed, if you thought it had to do with the money you might win…”
“I can’t leave.” He chuckled. “Besides, I haven’t won yet.”
“I won’t care if you don’t.”
“Good. Because if I do, a lot of it’s going to charity.”
Perfect. Just perfect. “I’m glad.”
That sparkle appeared in his eye, a boyish excitement that hinted at a secret. He hadn’t told her everything. She thought about his words. How the studio couldn’t let him quit. How he couldn’t. “Wait a minute. You can’t leave?”
He simply watched her, that twinkle in his eye confirming what she’d just realized. He brought his finger to his lips and winked. “Shh.”
She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “I won’t tell a soul.”
No, she wouldn’t reveal the truth to anyone.
Digg was the Derryville Demon.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THOUGH SHE HAD no desire to be away from Mick, Caro had to get back to work on the set Sunday. The pivotal final episode was to be taped this evening. She couldn’t bail on her responsibilities, though it killed her to leave Mick alone for the first time since yesterday. He said he planned to meet his parents for lunch, and would come by the set later.
Maybe it was just as well. She didn’t necessarily want their first impression of her to be as the predator whose TV show might kick their daughter when she was already down. And it didn’t look good for her. Even though Louise had gone to the police and told them that she had not left the gun in Mick’s office, they hadn’t released Sophie.
They still had the note. And they found it just as easy to believe Sophie could have gone back to the church office and gotten it later. She did have the keys, after all, since she’d been the secretary.
When Caro arrived on the set, she realized that exactly what she’d feared was going to happen had happened. The media had heard about Sophie being taken into custody yesterday. Though she still hadn’t been charged, that was enough scandal to get the bloodhounds baying. And they were all over the story, digging up everything they could on the famous young author.
Caro was in the production trailer, answering the questions of a hungry reporter from Entertainment News, when Mick showed up. He walked in just in time to hear her try to deflect a question about R. F. Colt. “We can’t comment on an ongoing police investigation,” she said, sounding stiff even to her own ears.
“Everyone else is commenting,�
� the reporter said. “They say the author, Sophie Winchester, used the cover of the Halloween party you were taping for your reality show to lure the woman she loathed to the inn.”
Caro just shook her head. “Again, I’m not going to speculate on a murder case. If you’d like to talk about the fictional one on the set of Killing Time in a Small Town, I’d be happy to oblige you.” She gave a soft, deliberate laugh designed to encourage the reporter’s curiosity. “We have quite an amazing drama playing out here. Bodies and clues everywhere. The stage is set for tonight’s grand finale.”
The reporter took the bait, finally asking some questions about the show. Caro answered them with all the enthusiasm she could muster. She even managed not to flinch when she looked up in time to see Mick leave the trailer. His expression had been unreadable, his body stiffly held.
God, she’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Hoped Sophie would be cleared so Caro wouldn’t be put in this horrible position—firmly between her job and the man she loved.
Oh, yeah, she loved him. There wasn’t any doubt about that. She’d lied to herself about it for a long time. Years. But now, she couldn’t lie anymore. Mick had stolen her heart back in college and he’d never really let go.
It just remained to be seen if he felt the same way—which she suspected he did. And what they were going to do about it—which was anyone’s guess.
The interview ended soon, and she found Mick fifteen minutes later, in the kitchen of the inn. “We knew this might happen,” she said softly as she joined him.
He nodded, sipping at a steaming cup of coffee. Caro helped herself to some, then sat down with him at the table. “Mick, talk to me.”
He finally met her eye. “I liked your answers.”
“You did?”
“Caroline, you sounded like the cool, professional studio executive you are. You’re doing exactly what you were meant to do.” He reached across the table and took her hand, bringing her fingers up to his lips. “You’re damn good at your job.”
Relief flooded through her. He understood. He wasn’t going to condemn her, or encourage her to make some kind of difficult choice. She might still have to make one. But at least she knew Mick trusted her enough to make it on her own.
“That doesn’t mean I haven’t heard what some of the other people on site are saying about Sophie.” He didn’t ask, didn’t try to convince her to do something, but she knew that’s what he was hoping she’d do. If she could.
“I don’t know if I can stop that. It’s public now—it’s out in the open and the studio is going to want to milk it.”
His mouth narrowed, but he nodded, apparently understanding. “I know. And I know you’d change that if you could.”
“You’re right.” She was warmed by his trust, even though she sensed his disappointment. He deserved to have that trust repaid. There was only one thing, one final truth, that she could offer him to prove that trust. She wanted him to know how she felt about him. “Mick, I…”
“Well, Miss Hester seems to have had a few enemies in this town,” a woman’s voice said from the back door of the kitchen.
They hadn’t realized Gwen was entering until she strode in, her face flushed, her hair windblown. She looked very excited as she pulled up a chair at the table.
Caro smothered a frustrated sigh at the lost moment. She’d been ready, so ready, to start trying to make things work between them. But what she had to tell Mick wouldn’t change. She had time to tell him she loved him, because that emotion wasn’t going to change for the rest of her life.
“Is that Hildy’s coffee?” Gwen asked.
“Jared’s,” Mick said.
“I’ll pass.”
“What’d you find out?” Caro asked, driven by the excitement in Gwen’s face. “I heard you struck out yesterday at the beauty parlor.”
Gwen nodded. “That’s right. This line of gossip ran a little bit deeper than the curler and hair dye set. I had to go right to the source.” She fell silent, building the anticipation.
Caro couldn’t stand the tension. “Well?”
“I went to church this morning.”
Caro almost laughed. Gwen made it sound as though she’d ventured into the hideout for the Hell’s Angels.
“It’s amazing how people loosened up and started talking afterward, especially since Pastor Bob wasn’t there to deliver the service.” She shook her head, tsking. “Poor man. He really loved his sister, whether she deserved it or not.”
That sounded interesting.
“I can’t be sure, mind you, not sure enough to go to the police. But it appears Miss Hester might have been in the habit of finding out personal, perhaps embarrassing, information about people, and profiting by it.”
Caro’s mouth dropped open, and Mick’s eyes widened.
“You mean she was blackmailing people?” she asked.
Gwen nodded, then rose, went to the fridge and got herself a bottled water. She took a few deep sips from it. Obviously gossip gathering was very thirsty work. “So says the very deepest, darkest part of the Derryville rumor mill,” she finally replied, “the group that sticks it out until the last donut is eaten in the social hall of the First Methodist Church of Derryville.”
“The upstanding matron of our town a blackmailer.” Mick shook his head, not even looking surprised. “Small towns. No wonder they’re perfect for bizarre reality shows.”
Caro shot him a frown. “Hey, no cracks about my show.”
“Sorry.”
“I have two sources,” Gwen continued, ignoring their spat. “Both were secondhand, both saying they knew someone else who’d paid Miss Hester off either with money or favors. One of them was a teenage girl who said her boyfriend had been under Miss Hester’s thumb for months.”
Caro just shook her head, unable to believe someone would stoop low enough to blackmailing a kid. This murder victim sounded less and less like a poor innocent.
Mick, Gwen and Caro stared at each other for a minute in the silent kitchen, thinking over the ramifications. Before they could discuss it further, Jared walked in, interrupting the charged moment. Gwen got up, put her arms around him and told him what she’d learned.
“So,” he said when she’d finished, “Miss Hester has a history of collecting secrets. She had the gun. She’d touched at least one note mentioning a strange woman’s name, and giving a time and place for a meeting.” Jared looked at them all expectantly, waiting for them to catch up.
Caro finally put the pieces together. So did Mick. They looked at each other and said, in unison, “Miss Hester was killed by someone she was blackmailing.”
Gwen looked disappointed that they’d beat her to the conclusion as Jared nodded in approval. “I believe so. And it’s very possible the person she was targeting was someone she knew in California back in the early seventies. My P.I. says Hester Esmerelda Tomlinson Devane was somehow involved in show business, but he doesn’t yet know how.”
Mick narrowed his eyes, muttering, “Esmerelda. Esmerelda…” Then he sucked in a shocked breath. He shot to his feet, pushing his chair back so hard it fell to the floor with a crash. “Son of a bitch!”
Caro, Jared and Gwen gave him their full attention.
“Esmerelda Devane and Victoria Lynn. I’ve finally remembered why the names sound so familiar.” He grabbed Caro’s hand and dragged her toward the door. “Come on, I need your help.”
“Hey, what about us?” Gwen said.
“I’ll let you know if my hunch is right,” Mick said over his shoulder. “Jared, keep your guy in California nosing around until I get back. Caroline and I are going to be busy for a few hours.”
“Busy doing what?” Caroline asked.
But he didn’t reply. She sensed that he kept silent because she wasn’t going to like the answer. When they arrived back at his house, he beelined right for the TV room and the cabinet where he kept his stash of movies.
“Tell me.”
“It’ll sound too crazy.”
“Crazier than a blackmailing church matron found dead in a bathtub on the set of a reality show?”
He laughed out loud and she did too, both of them badly needing the levity. She didn’t know quite how much she’d be needing the lightened moment, until she saw exactly which movies he was sorting through. “You must be kidding.”
Caro stared at Mick, not believing what she saw. He was kneeling in front of his entertainment center, digging through piles of videos. Those videos.
“I’m not kidding.”
“Mick, this is no time for us to watch dirty movies! Remember what happened the last time?”
He looked up and gave her a decidedly lascivious look. “Oh, yeah, I remember.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. “I still haven’t forgiven you for that night.”
“I bought you a present to make up for it.”
“You did?”
He nodded. The evil look in his eye should have warned her. “It’s a vibrator.”
She grabbed a pillow from the sofa and hurled it at his head. He easily deflected it, laughter on his lips. Then he returned to his task.
Finally, just when Caro thought she couldn’t stand the suspense anymore, she heard him make a satisfied sound.
“What?” she asked, almost afraid to know.
He turned toward her, a confident look on his face as he held up a video box. “Bingo.”
IT WAS CRUNCH TIME, time to start taping the final episode of Killing Time in a Small Town, and the on-site producer was nowhere to be seen. Jacey appeared to be the only one who noticed. Everyone else was too keyed up, too excited. Finally, the mystery would be solved. Cast and crew would learn who the killer was, who would walk away a millionaire and who would leave empty-handed.
Jacey hated the suspense. Knowing that Digg was the killer made it that much tougher.
The four finalists entered the parlor of the Little Bohemie Inn to discuss the last murder. It had come down to Digg, James, Logan and Whittington. Mona, thank God, had been among the casualties the night before, as had Ginger. Jacey had been glad as hell to see Mona go since she was nearly certain she was the one who’d been spying on Jacey and Digg the other day. But she actually kind of missed Ginger, who’d been damn good at the game until she got tripped up over the murder in the public library.
