Wake Up to Murder (A Ricki Rydell Mystery Book 2)

by Abby Matthews

  Then there was the fight with Becca, who clearly overreacted when she learned Ricki hadn’t told her that the love of her life left her for another woman. She didn’t tell anyone what happened, so there was no reason to get offended. It was her life, her secret, her broken heart, her bruised ego. If she wanted to protect those precious parts of herself, and if her own BFF couldn’t deal, well, too bad.

  By now, Ricki was wound up tighter than a ball of yarn at a knitter’s convention and had to do something with that negative energy. So, she called her agent.

  Phone pressed to her ear and chewing on a fingernail, Ricki paced the floor. Rumpus watched from the couch. Her agent, Tracy, always answered her phone by the second ring. It was now the third. The fourth. Voicemail. Not wanting to leave a nasty message that she would later regret, Ricki kept it short, working extra hard to be polite. “Call me as soon as you get this. We need to talk.” All she had to do now was wait. Except she didn’t want to wait. Waiting was overrated. She was always waiting for something: phone calls, emails, texts, edits, release dates, starting her mystery writing career.

  And so, she paced the floor some more, trying to shut out thoughts of Marty, her fight with Becca, and the growling in her stomach. She couldn’t eat when she was angry or focus on anything besides being mad.

  After a good ten minutes of pacing the floor, her cell rang. Tracy’s name showed up on the display. Ricki’s stomach tightened. “Keep it under control, girl.” She swiped the phone to answer. “Thanks for calling back.”

  “What’s up? I had planned to call you next week.”

  “I believe you forgot to tell me something.” Ricki took a breath. There was total silence on the other end. “Hello?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. I was thinking. What did I forget to tell you?” She sounded genuinely clueless. “I’m checking the Post-its on my desk, and I don’t see anything.”

  “Does the name Taryn Wilkes ring a bell?”

  “Yes. Did you call her?”

  “Call her? I just happened to run into her on the street today, and that’s when I learned about the show. Imagine my surprise.”

  “What do you mean? I sent you an email weeks ago. You opened it. The read-receipt said so.”

  Tracy only sent a read-receipt on important emails, and Ricki would have remembered that. Tracy’s email address was marked as safe and wouldn’t have gone to the spam folder, so there was no logical explanation why Ricki hadn’t seen this important email. “I don’t remember reading it. I’ll check again, but I know I would’ve remembered something as important as that.”

  “I can resend it, if you want.”

  “Go ahead, but it won’t matter.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to do it.”

  Tracy sighed. “You know what? I’ve had a bad day, and I’m feeling a bit pissy at the moment.”

  “Same here.”

  “I’ve always been patient with you, but you need to get over this aversion to people. You can’t get out of this, unless you get sick or something. The publisher wants you to push this next book. After I talked with them about wanting to change genres, they panicked. You’re going to be doing a bit more marketing than usual for the rest of your books, so you better get used to it. I’m late for a meeting. Talk to you later.”

  Dead air.

  Tracy hung up on her. Her agent had never hung up on her before.

  This was all too confusing. Tracy said she sent the email, so she must have sent it. When Ricki was procrastinating a writing project, she worked for hours setting up her inbox so that all the important messages went into their own folders automatically. All business emails were marked as safe senders so they would never end up in the junk mail or the trash folder. Maybe Tracy thought she sent it and didn’t. To be certain the email hadn’t got redirected, Ricki checked every folder she had, including the folder with all of Marty’s emails. She didn’t stay in that folder too long for fear of getting pulled into a dark pit of despair. Seeing him with the woman he left her for was bad enough. There was no sign of the email anywhere. But while she was searching for the lost one, a new one showed up. It was from Tracy. It said very simply: “I’m sorry. It’s been a horrible day. Talk to you tonight.” Along with the apology, Tracy copied and pasted the original email and its attachments.

  Ricki read the email out loud: “I just got off the phone with one of the associate producers for a new talk show coming to your area. It sounds exciting. It’s going to be called Wake Up, Somerset. She says she knows you from high school. Her name is Taryn Wilkes. Anyway, she wants you to be the first guest on the show so you can promote your new book. After I got off the phone with her, I called the publisher and they’re behind it one hundred percent. In fact, they’re highly encouraging it.”

  Ricki stopped reading and rubbed her eyes. Rumpus rested his chin on her leg. “It looks like I can’t get out of this. Just like she said.” She thought back to Tracy’s stinging comment about how she needed to get over her aversion to people. She didn’t have an aversion to people; she just preferred them in small doses. If this had been the first time she had heard such a comment, she might not have been feeling the sting of the criticism so sharply. Even her own best friend said that very morning that she needed to work on learning better social skills. No doubt they were right.

  She continued reading the email. “Taryn attached a file which I am passing along to you. In it, you’ll find some particulars. She said they still had a few things to iron out, like who the host was going to be, but wanted to get the ball rolling so they could be ready when they found their host. Read it over and give her a call. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  Ricki opened the attachment and found a press release for Wake Up, Somerset. Along with the press release was a detailed email from Taryn explaining how the show came to be and who was involved. It seemed Taryn had been working her buns off to get this thing off the ground. She spearheaded the whole project, found a couple of producers who agreed to put the money behind it, found a studio to work in, everything. It was quite impressive. Ricki was excited for Taryn, so excited for her she managed to talk herself into wanting to go on a live show that she couldn’t get out of anyway.

  “It was nice of her to think of me.” She scratched Rumpus’ velvety ears. “It looks like I’m going on a talk show, boy.” He thumped his back leg in response, probably from the ear scratching and not the fact that Ricki was going to do a talk show.

  Still feeling the sting of criticism, and while she was online, she thought maybe she could find a couple of books on how to work through this social roadblock of hers. But she was happy with herself. Why was it that everyone else gave her a hard time? Maybe what she really needed was a book on self-acceptance and not caring what other people thought. Still, it probably wouldn’t hurt her to learn better social, and coping, skills. The writing life was a solitary one; the publishing life, not so much.

  It would take a couple of days for her to get comfortable with the idea of going on a talk show. It would take a solid week to get excited about it. She called and left a voicemail to let Taryn know she would love to do the show. With that out of the way, she shifted her focus to Becca. She would give it a few more days, but she had to find a way to get back in her friend’s good graces.

  Three

  It took many back and forth phone calls before Ricki and Taryn worked out the particulars of their first meeting. Taryn insisted the executive producers wanted to meet Ricki and give her a tour of the studio before the first live show. The request was unusual, but since it was a new show, she didn’t question it. Still reluctant, but knowing she couldn’t get out of it, Ricki prepared herself for the hour-long drive to Millsboro, where the studio was located. Before heading out of town, she stopped at The Bean for a cappuccino and an almond croissant to hold her over until after their morning meeting.

  Although she mended fences with her agent, she still hadn’t heard from Becca. She would give her anothe
r couple of days before calling, just in case she needed more space. Becca could be stubborn and was probably waiting for Ricki to make the first move. But, for the time being, she had other things to worry about. With the address loaded into the GPS, she zoned out until she pulled into the parking lot of a small, cinderblock building situated on a steep hill, out in the middle of nowhere.

  The wind howled like a lonely wolf up on that hill, and when she stepped out of the car, she felt like the last person on earth. The autumn breeze was crisp, carrying a hint of waning summer on it. It gave her a sense of loneliness and isolation. She stood in a nearly empty parking lot with grass growing in the cracks of the cement, like it lost the inevitable battle of passing time and neglect. Even the building had that lost in time look. It might have been a small school or a government office building at one time—it was hard to tell from the outside.

  She had only been to Millsboro one time when her family came to the Scottish Highlander Festival, but that was in the historic part of downtown. The bagpipes made her cry. They never returned despite the festival being one of the largest attractions in the area.

  She smoothed out the wrinkles of her skirt, fluffed her hair, and dabbed on some lip gloss before going inside.

  As soon as she stepped through the doors, she knew she was most certainly in an old television studio. The faded call letters, KDPA, were left exposed on the freshly painted wall. The new inhabitants of this building could have easily wiped out its history, but they chose to honor it by not covering it up with paint. Dust covered pictures, from a bygone era when the studio was active, hung on the walls in the lobby. Some of the lighting fixtures and a dusty old television camera were shoved over in the corner. She flicked her eyebrows and smiled at the sight. Her father would have loved to have seen these ancient relics. But where were the humans?

  Was this some kind of joke? A set-up? This was a situation the main character of a book she had read recently found herself in: an archrival set up a fake meeting, leading the amateur sleuth right to her almost death. Her imagination getting out of hand, she laughed to herself and vowed to lay off binging on all those murder mysteries. Maybe everyone was at lunch and that’s why they weren’t there, except it was too early for lunch. She stood in the double-doors, propped open with bricks, and called out. “Hello?”

  She could have sworn she heard a male’s voice somewhere in the building, but so far, no face to go with it. She called out once again. This time, a man in his early 50s came running across the studio toward the lobby. “I thought I heard someone yelling,” the man said. “Can I help you with something?”

  “I’m here to see Taryn.”

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “I’m Ricki Rydell.”

  “Who? Oh, right. Ricki. The writer. Okay.” The man offered his hand to shake. He nearly ripped her arm off. “My name is Ned Daniels. I’m one of the executive producers of Wake Up, Somerset. My ex-wife loves your books.”

  Ricki always cringed when a man said his ex-wife enjoyed her books. She wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. More often than not, she could tell by the body language whether it was good or bad, but not this time. The man’s face and voice didn’t reveal what he was really thinking, making it hard to read. He didn’t sound bitter, so she let the comment slide with a quick thank you.

  “Taryn?” Ned called out. “Where is she, anyway?” This he said under his breath. “Could you excuse me for a second?” Ricki watched as he scrambled around the studio, calling out for Taryn. When she finally emerged, Ned threw his hands up in the air. “Where were you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, crossing things off everyone’s to-do list. I haven’t even gotten to my own, yet.”

  Ricki trained her ears on their conversation. It was a quiet argument, but an argument nonetheless. There was some tension there. The man may have been hard to read close up, but from where she stood, it was quite clear how he felt. Ned mentioned Ricki’s name, prompting Taryn to whip her head around in the direction of the lobby.

  “I’m sorry,” Taryn said, rushing across the studio to Ricki. “I was in back doing some paperwork and didn’t hear you come in.” She must have been really deep in that paperwork not to have heard Ned’s voice booming throughout the small studio. “I’m so glad you agreed to do the show. After I talked with you, I was really worried. I had no idea you had such poor communication with your agent.”

  “Actually, we speak every month and email when needed. That email must have gotten lost. But, I’m here now, so let’s talk.”

  “Well, you already met Ned and…” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other nervously and scanned the studio. “Jim is around here somewhere.” She waved her hands at the side of her head. “It’s madness around here right now. We’re trying so hard to get everything ready for the first show, and we still don’t have a host.” She laughed nervously. “See? Madness.”

  Taryn’s hair was pressed flat against her head. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and it looked like she had slept in her clothes. If they were trying to get this thing off the ground within the next two weeks, it showed.

  “Well, why don’t you give me a tour of the studio while we wait for Jim to show up.”

  “Yes, a tour. I don’t know where my head is. Could I get you a coffee or anything?”

  Ricki reached in her purse and pulled out her travel mug. “I’m good, thanks.” She fought the urge to give Taryn a hug and a pat on the back, assuring her everything would be okay.

  “Let me show you the set. It’s beautiful. I had a hand in designing it.”

  Ricki stared up at the stage in the center of the studio. Large lights, casting off an amazing amount of heat, were aimed at the set. On stage, there were two neon-orange, leather chairs angled toward each other with a glass-covered coffee table made from gas pipes wedged between them. The rest of the set had hints of industrial, warehouse loft features. Not that she was an expert on talk shows, but the furniture and the colors and the style gave the impression that the producers were hoping to attract a younger, hipper audience. Seeing Taryn was the one who pushed for this talk show, she probably had people her own age, and younger, in mind.

  “Now, let me tell you a little bit about the show. I’ve always believed the Somerset area could be the next Portland or Seattle, on a smaller scale, of course. Have you ever been to Portland or Seattle?”

  “I’ve been to Seattle a couple of times. The coffee is great.”

  “After I graduated from school, I dreamed of doing something just like this. Every day I sat on the floor of my living room in my tiny apartment and envisioned this into being. I can’t tell you how proud I am.”

  Ricki glanced over at Taryn who stood admiring the set and its contents as if it were her child on stage in his first school play. She glowed with pride and accomplishment.

  “It looks like you put a lot of work into bringing your dream to fruition. It’s always good to celebrate the small victories.”

  Taryn inhaled slowly and deeply. “This is no small victory. I clawed my way to get this.” She gave a quick shake of her head. “Unfortunately, we don’t even have a host yet.”

  Ricki studied Taryn in disbelief. “But you’re set to go live in a little over a week. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  Taryn laughed again. “I know, right?” Ricki wondered if maybe Taryn had been drinking. She didn’t remember the Taryn from high school being so giggly, so either she was losing it or she was intoxicated. She couldn’t smell anything on her breath, so Ricki picked losing it.

  “Let me show you the green room.” Taryn walked so fast that Ricki struggled to keep up with her. “We’ll have whatever you want backstage to help you get through the show. Sometimes, and you didn’t hear this from me, celebrities like to have a bit of the good stuff before they go out. To ease the nerves. So, if you want anything, just let me know.”

  “You seem to be wearing a lot of hats. What exactly do you do here?”

  Fo
r the first time since Ricki stepped in the building, Taryn released the tension in her shoulders. “What do I do here? Try everything. Ricki, you have no idea. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in three months. I’m an associate producer, but to be honest, I feel like I’ve been doing the work of three people.” She looked over her shoulder in the direction of where Ned had gone. “I mean, yeah sure, it was my idea to begin with, but it’s been nuts.”

  Maybe when Taryn was busy visualizing her talk show, she didn’t visualize the amount of work it would take to put it together.

  “Well, it looks good, and it’s almost time. I’m sure once the show starts things will settle down.”

  “I hope.” She sighed. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Is there anything you need before we go live?”

  “If possible, a list of the questions so I can prepare.”

  Taryn looked around for a scrap of paper and a pencil. “What’s your email address? Did I even get your email address?”

  Ricki paused to think. “I don’t believe so. You went through my agent, and we talked on the phone since then.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have a list of questions since we don’t have a host. Whoever we hire will probably have their own idea about how to interview.”

  “That’s fine. You can email me at ricki@ricki.rydell.com. If you could get them to me as soon as possible, that would help. I want to make your show just as successful as you do.”

  Taryn bit her lip as if holding back tears. “Thank you. I just have to keep telling myself that it’s almost done. Less than two weeks. If I can get through the next couple of weeks, I’ll be okay.”

  “Taryn?”

  “In here, Jim.” Taryn snapped to attention and straightened her hair, glancing in the full-length mirror in the green room. Once she saw what was in the reflection, she stopped trying to make it better. “This is another of our executive producers.”