Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Roz picked up the phone and spoke quietly, not wanting other diner patrons to hear the conversation. “Duke, how’s it going?”
“Hey, Roz. Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you, but I didn’t have much to report, and there’s still nothing official yet, OK?”
Roz tried to quell her disappointment. “Can you tell me anything, even on background?”
“You can’t quote me or even say this came from the sheriff’s office. And even then, I don’t think you’re going to be happy.”
“You’re killing me, Duke. What do you know? How was he killed? Shotgun?”
Whatever Duke said didn’t compute.
“Wha-what?” she stammered. “Vape gun?”
“No, vape pen. Like those things people smoke?”
She’d misheard him the first time. But it still didn’t make sense. “How did a vape pen kill him?”
“The ME thinks it exploded.”
She winced as the crime scene—if it was a crime—popped into her head. “So it wasn’t murder, then?” She glanced up at Alden, who frowned. She shouldn’t be disappointed, but she couldn’t help feeling a little bit of a letdown.
“On the surface, no. Probably not.”
“Wait … probably not?”
Duke’s voice got even lower, and since it sounded like he was in his car, that meant she really had to focus to hear him. She put a finger in the ear that wasn’t glued to her phone.
“The ME and county forensics team are looking at all the evidence found at the scene. This isn’t the first case of an exploding battery in a vape pen. But something looks off to them. That’s all I can say for now.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t tease me.”
She could almost hear Duke’s grin through the phone. “Don’t tease me,” he said. “You still with that guy Alden?”
It was the first time he’d asked her directly, even though it should be obvious by now.
“I am,” she said simply.
There was a beat. “OK, fair enough. We’ll release something when we know more. You can say we haven’t ruled out foul play. And you can attribute that to a source in the sheriff’s department.”
“I hate using unnamed sources, you know.”
“But you will in this case, won’t you? And I’ll give it to you first when we know more. You find out anything about this guy?”
Ah, here was the quid pro quo. “We’re still tracking it down, but we think he was planning to open a film studio here and had promised Enolia Honeywood and maybe others”—she didn’t want to name Sheryl—“that he wanted to make their stories into movies.”
“One of the others being Sheryl Pugh, I take it. She told me.” So Duke already knew about Sheryl.
But Roz’s unconscious use of “others” triggered another question in her mind.
Were there others? Other people whose dreams were crushed when Wayne met his unfortunate end?
“Roz? You still there?”
She focused on the call again. “Yeah. Thanks, Duke. Let’s touch base soon.”
“I appreciate any and all tips from the public. Later.” He chuckled as he ended the call.
“What did he say?” Alden asked.
She decided not to tell him Duke asked about him. Alden didn’t need any more grounds for teasing her. He had plenty already. “It was more what he didn’t say. They haven’t ruled out foul play. And the forensics people think something ‘looks off’ about what happened.”
“But what did happen?”
“Oh, right. They said Wayne Vandershell’s vape pen exploded.”
“Holy cannoli.” Alden grimaced. “I guess that would explain what we saw. Hard to imagine something more ‘off’ than a vape pen exploding.”
“I can imagine a lot of things, but yeah, that seems odd to me, too. Hang on a sec.” She picked up her phone again and did a quick search.
“Whoa. Apparently it’s not that odd—several hundred emergency room visits a year are linked to vape pen accidents, with injuries to the face, more to the hands, and most to the groin. ”
“The groin!” Alden said it so loudly that people at nearby tables turned their heads to look.
Roz laughed. “I guess you shouldn’t carry them in your pocket.”
“I don’t intend to carry them at all. Ever.”
“I’m so relieved. You’re dangerous enough already.”
He leaned in, offered a mischievous smile and pitched his voice low. “Am I?”
She whispered back. “Yes, darling. You’re dangerous to my diet. I can’t believe I ate this whole sandwich.”
“Ha,” he scoffed, sitting up straight, though his eyes twinkled.
“All right, I guess we have to go get something to put in our story.” She waved over their server.
“I’ve got this.” He pulled out his wallet. “Or I should say, The Courier-Beacon does.”
“We can’t expense every meal.”
“Only the meals when we work through the story. At least until Webb calls me on it. And he won’t.”
“If I were in charge, reporters would pay for our own lunch.” She wondered what their well-heeled publisher thought of Alden’s expense reports.
Not that Webb Howard, who also owned the tabloid where Alden used to work and now a network of online news sites, ever appeared in the office. She’d met him exactly once.
Alden handed a credit card to their server, who scurried away. “This is nothing compared with the bills I’d rack up at the National Eye. Travel, fancy restaurants, astronomical bar tabs, payoffs.” He sighed. “Those were the days.”
But she heard the sarcasm in his tone. “You don’t miss it, do you?”
“God, no. It was awful.”
She snickered.
“I’ll go see Mae at the bookstore, OK?” Alden asked.
“Perfect. I’ll try Nicole Esquivel first and see if she can get me an ‘in’ with the family. I’ll try the company office if I have to, but they could give me the runaround for days. And they might want to if the project is cloaked in that much secrecy.”
“If the movie studio is even their project,” Alden said, signing the receipt the server brought back. “Let me know what you find out.”