Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Hey, Sheryl. I thought you were taking the week off.” Roz wandered over to the one free desk they left for freelancers who wanted to drop by, though most of them filed remotely.
Sheryl seemed to like the companionship of the office, not that any other reporters were there at the moment.
Bruce had left, and John was in his fishbowl, on the phone.
Sheryl, in loose tan linen pants and a pink T-shirt patterned with green leaves, looked up from her laptop.
“Hi, Roz. I just had to get out of the house, you know? Otherwise I just pace or go outside and start gardening, and if I trim anything more off the plants I have, I’m going to have to plant all new ones. ” She laughed, a little nervously.
Roz leaned against the desk next to Sheryl’s chair.
Besides the freelancer’s laptop, the surface was empty except for a couple of reference books and the scanner they kept to listen to police calls.
There’d been radio chatter when she walked in this morning, but it had stopped almost immediately.
She’d been so busy, she forgot to look into what she might’ve missed. And now Sheryl was here.
“How are you doing?” Roz asked. “Are the police bothering you?”
“Not so much, though they threatened to come talk to me again. I told them I don’t know anything else.”
“What a pain.” Roz paused, aware of how awkward the next couple of minutes were going to be.
Sheryl sat back and looked up at her. “Have—have you learned any more about what happened?”
So maybe that was why Sheryl came to the office. And Roz didn’t want to answer that question directly.
“We’ve learned a little more about Wayne,” Roz said.
“Oh, really?” Dread colored her question.
“How much do you know about the movies he made?”
Sheryl seemed to relax a little. “Oh, they were really good. They won awards and were in film festivals. Mostly small ones, but he’d done a feature or two.”
“So you’ve seen some of them?”
“Well, no. Except Fastest Spin Wins.” Sheryl lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “He said the rights were tied up in sensitive negotiations and that’s why they weren’t on YouTube or streaming.”
There was that phrase again. “He didn’t have a copy he could show you?”
“Oh, he did, I’m sure. It just wasn’t convenient, I guess. I mean, we always had other things to talk about.” Sheryl looked starry-eyed for a second as she pushed her hair away from her face. “Why are you asking?”
“Alden and I have been looking into Wayne, and we think maybe he didn’t make all the movies he talked about.”
Sheryl’s face froze as she blinked up at Roz. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Are you sure?” Roz didn’t want to be too tough on Sheryl, but how could she be so innocent given her connection to the guy?
“Well, he told me …” Sheryl’s voice trailed off.
“Wayne told people a lot of things,” Roz said gently. “How far had he gotten in developing your script?”
“Um, well, he said he had a couple of directors interested. You know this Hollywood stuff. Nothing happens overnight.”
“That’s what I hear,” Roz agreed. “Had you invested in the movie?”
“Just in some preproduction work Wayne said he had to do—a trailer. A pitch deck. Storyboards to get the right actors interested and so on.”
And there it was. He should’ve been paying her as a scriptwriter. Instead, she paid him.
“How much?” Roz asked.
“Oh, um.” Sheryl seemed to be catching on. Her voice wavered. “About fifty thousand dollars. But he said I’d make ten times that when the movie got made.”
“He said you’d make half a million dollars? That’s—a lot.” Some writers made that, but it was way more than a first-time scriptwriter could expect unless they’d written a huge blockbuster, at least according to stuff she’d googled.
“I know! I was so excited.” Sheryl paused, her enthusiasm fading. “And he was so nice to me. So sweet. We were going to go on a trip together, just the two of us. He’s the first man I’ve seriously dated since the divorce.” A tear rolled down her cheek.
Now Roz felt terrible. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” Sheryl sniffled and turned back to the laptop, though Roz wondered if she could even see the screen through her now copious tears. Sheryl might be sorry in more ways than one as she thought about what Roz said.
That weasel Wayne Vandershell had bilked Sheryl out of fifty thousand dollars. Even if he’d intended to use the money as he said, all of which sounded like a scam, he’d lied about his credentials. Was she his only mark?
And was Sheryl as innocent as she seemed? Roz sat at her desk and snuck a look at her. If Sheryl had figured out Wayne was a weasel, did she kill him?
Roz had just closed her laptop when her phone vibrated. She eyed the ID and picked it up. “Duke? What’s up?”
“How are you doing today? You could’ve died yesterday.”
“Well aware,” Roz said, speaking softly so Sheryl couldn’t hear. “I’m fine, though I threw out those clothes. Thanks for the ride. Any more word on Vandershell?”
“If you mean the autopsy, nothing more than I already told you.” He sounded strangely excited. “I’m surprised I didn’t hear from you this morning.”
Oh, crap. The scanner. “What happened?”
“I really shouldn’t tell you this, but the sheriff is putting out a press release at noon. I’m letting you get a head start, but please wait till then to publish it.”
“What?” Roz stuck the phone between her ear and shoulder and opened up her laptop again, ready to type.
“The department sent a tow truck to roll Wayne Vandershell’s BMW off Main Street today—we didn’t even realize it was there until it got a couple of parking tickets—and the driver found something funny under the seat.”
“What, Duke? Drugs? An eight-track player? What?”
He laughed. “There were some odd wires and—long story short, the driver called us before he tried to move it. Deputy Byrd took one look and called in the county bomb squad. There was a bomb under the seat rigged to explode with a remote trigger. Plastic explosives.”
Roz said something very unladylike, and Duke sniggered.
“Did it blow up?” she asked, even as she realized it was a dumb question. She probably would’ve heard it if it had.
“Disarmed. It’s being analyzed. No leads yet. But somebody really wanted Wayne Vandershell dead. Oh, and that book you left me? There was blood on it.”
“Thank God you’re here. I’m starving,” Alden said as Roz slipped into his booth at Taco Titan.
It was a chronically packed low-class Tex-Mex place with colorful paper garlands and a llama pinata and an inflatable Corona airplane (he didn’t really want that looming over him right now) and a digital wall clock counting down to Cinco de Mayo.
Less than a month until the worst amateur drinking holiday of the year, but he loved it anyway.
And he loved Roz.
She was glowing, full of news. “I’m hungry, too. I almost forgot to eat.”
“I never forget to eat.” He’d already made a dent in the chips and salsa. He grinned and pushed a menu toward her. “I ordered you a Coke.”
“Works for me,” she said. “I’m getting the Taco Tuesday special.”
They both did, rattling off their orders for the taco platter to the server, who’d brought Roz’s soda in a huge cup.
“I had to type up a quick story for online,” she said after the server left, “embargoed till the sheriff’s press release came out. John was going to push the button.”
Alden sat up straighter. “Are they releasing something on the cause of death?”
“Nope.” She looked at her watch, then at him, mischief in her eyes. “It should be live now.”
“Aw, you’re not going to tell me?” He was already pulling out his phone and went to the Courier-Beacon site. No way! “Someone tried to blow up Wayne Vandershell? You’ve got to be kidding me. Somebody really wanted that guy dead.”
“That’s exactly what Duke said.”
He gave her a flat-lipped expression that made her laugh. “Well, I have news too.”
“And I have more news! You first.”
Alden outlined what Chuck told him about the Cessna’s avgas being contaminated with jet fuel, likely the cause of the plane’s engine croaking.
“So not an accident,” Roz guessed.
“Who knows how the NTSB will see it, but Chuck says there’s no way Sebastian accidentally added jet fuel to the tank. Someone did it deliberately.”
“So somebody might be trying to kill Sebastian, too. That makes my news all the more interesting.”
“What?” Alden said, and then the tacos arrived. They took a moment to get a bite in their bellies before she replied.
“These al pastor tacos are so addictive.” She sipped her cola.
“Roz,” he said impatiently and set out to finish the first of three crunchy beef tacos.
She smiled. “Oh, all right. Sebastian and Wayne’s agreement included an escrow fund, the one that Sebastian thought Wayne wasn’t contributing to.
They both had to put in a substantial amount to ensure the health of the movie studio project.
Even more interesting given what happened, there was a death clause.
If one of them died, the entire escrow fund went to the other partner. ”
“Wow. How much are we talking here?”
“This paperwork didn’t include exact numbers, but it had to be a lot for a big project like this one, right?
” she said. “That’s not all. If Sebastian died first, Wayne would’ve had the right to buy the property from his estate for far below market value, which I suppose was a way to ensure the project would continue.
That way all of Wayne’s so-called investment wouldn’t have been lost.”
“That sounds like a terrible agreement from Sebastian’s point of view. How could he sign that?”
Roz offered a half shrug. “Maybe he did it for love. He said Wayne agreed to make one of Nicole’s screenplays into a film and that’s why he went along. And I think he was charmed by the guy, at least at first. Sebastian seemed to be excited by the prospect of a movie studio, too.”
“But if Wayne hadn’t paid his fair share to the escrow fund when he died, that means Sebastian is really out of luck.
Though he couldn’t have known that up front if Wayne’s shady lawyer was hiding the truth.
” Alden forked up a tasty bite of refried beans and considered the ramifications. “What if both of them died?”
“That’s a good question. The heir of the last one to die would make out. The inheritor would be the rightful owner of everything—the property, the project, the money.”
“Holy cannoli. We need to see if Wayne has an heir.”
“I wonder if Duke found family to notify. An heir is certainly a potential suspect. But Sebastian would’ve theoretically benefited from Wayne’s death.
And then if Sebastian died …” Roz pursed her lips around her straw and drank deeply of her soda, and Alden got distracted by her mouth until she said, “I think we know who Sebastian’s heir is. Nicole.”
“Whoa.” He paused for a second, then resumed eating. They both did, chewing on the idea.
“Have you talked to Nicole yet?” he finally asked, all three tacos happily consumed.
“Not yet.”
“If Nicole killed Wayne and then sabotaged her husband’s plane …”
“That’s heavy,” Roz said. “Killing her own husband? The father of her children? But she’s not our only suspect. Wayne was no good. He ticked people off. He bilked Sheryl out of fifty thousand dollars—that we know of. ”
“Good lord. How?”
“He asked her to ‘invest’ in a pitch deck and a trailer and stuff like that for a movie he probably wasn’t making.”
“And she was naive enough to go along.” Alden hated seeing people ripped off, especially when scammers preyed on their fragile egos and dreams. “Do you think she did it?”
Roz swirled her cup. “Honestly, no. I think she’s just starting to realize he wasn’t all he pretended to be. But maybe. We thought she found the body. Maybe he wasn’t dead yet when she went to see him.”
Alden’s phone buzzed on the table, and he eyed the text. “That’s Craig getting back to me. He says he can meet me at Bean Me Up. He’s there working.”
“I’ll go with you.” Roz dabbed her mouth with her napkin and smiled. “Mocha for dessert. I could go for that. Maybe we’ll learn more about Enolia and Wayne. Then we’ll deal with Nicole.”
“And Blake,” Alden added.
“Right, Blake. Our flying thespian. Alden?”
“Yes?” He reached across the table impulsively. She laid her hand in his, and he grasped it.
“Let’s tread carefully,” she murmured. “Somebody tried to kill Wayne in more ways than one. And somebody tried to kill Sebastian, too.”
“And us!” He feigned an affronted tone. “You can’t leave us out.”
She let out a dry chuckle. “I suspect we were collateral damage, but that’s kind of my point. If the killer or killers decide we’re getting too close, I have no doubt they’ll try to kill again. And they might actually aim at us next time.”
“I won’t let them hurt you.” He squeezed her hand. “And I won’t let either of us get into a plane until this is all over.”