Chapter Fourteen #2
“Which he hardly ever took out of the cookie jar,” Seth said.
Mort threw his hands up. “Who keeps an unsecured gun in a cookie jar?”
The bickering was interrupted by the return of our waitress.
Mort turned to Seth. “You pick one and I pick one?”
Seth agreed, and they chose two platters from the menu. One thing I liked about my two friends is that while they might not always agree, they were always quick to put aside an argument, especially if food was involved.
“I wonder how Rockford would go about solving Ray’s murder,” Maureen said. I suspect she was changing the subject.
“First off,” Mort said, “he’d soak you two hundred a day, plus expenses. Probably five times that nowadays.”
“Easily,” Seth said. “Then I think he’d check with all his contacts. Being in prison might have actually helped his career. He had a lot of ex-cons to talk with, as well as police contacts. And if they didn’t help, he’d sometimes just print out a new business card and go undercover.”
“Do we have any contacts we haven’t tapped?” Mort asked.
“I think in this case,” Maureen said, “we are the contacts, and Lieutenant Caceras has tapped us.”
“And he did mention letting us have a look at the background checks,” I said.
“Probably because there’s nothing there,” Mort said.
“Or he wants another set of eyes on it,” Maureen said.
“What if…?” Howard said.
When he didn’t continue, we just waited, the gulls and the surf filling the silence.
Finally, Victoria said, “You going to finish that, big guy?”
“I just wondered if I have any contacts in the industry that might have information we need,” Howard said. “What information do we need?”
“It might be helpful to know a little more about Ray,” I said. “We know that he worked as a DJ, that he was married to Sandi, and that he recently became more proactive about his health, but other than that…”
“Right,” Mort said. “Often, the clues to a homicide are found in the victim’s life. We don’t really know much about his life outside the studio.”
“Does it matter?” Seth asked. “Because we know he was killed in the studio, and we know who was there.”
“Does that make this a locked-room mystery?” Maureen said.
“Well, maybe, but it’s still a huge room,” I said.
“And a lot of staff were present, some of whom may have had prior dealings with Ray that we don’t know about.
Even if those background checks don’t contain any bombshells, I’d like to learn more about the others who figured into his work life.
Evelyn Grider, Marty Wardell, Jenny Yager, and maybe Bobby Brandon, while we’re at it. ”
“I might check with my agent,” Howard said. “She’s pretty clued in, and when she doesn’t know the answer to something, she usually knows someone who does.”
“And I think one of my associates recently sold a house to Marty Wardell,” Victoria said. “She might have picked up some gossip.”
“That doesn’t get us anything on Ray,” Mort said.
“I’ve been chatting with Mike, the, uh, microphone guy,” I said. “He seemed to have a high opinion of Ray. Perhaps he knows more. I can try to catch up with him tomorrow. He told me that the audio from the headsets the crew wears is also stored, and we haven’t listened to that yet.”
“Well, look at us,” Seth said. “I guess there was more to learn from Rockford than you thought, eh, Mort?”
“I’m still not going to start keeping my gun in the cookie jar,” he said, then leaned back in his chair, his eyes lighting up as the waitress brought out two heaping trays of food.
“Wait!” Howard said, catching Mort and Seth mid-reach toward the food.
He stood up and pulled out his cell phone.
“I want to get a couple of pictures.” We waited patiently—well, most of us did.
Seth may have rolled his eyes a bit. Howard took several shots of just the food from various angles, then had us all pose for a couple of group photos, then used his long arm to include himself in a picture.
“Ooh,” he said, “that’s a nice one. I might have to use that on my tour website.”
“Please email me copies,” I said, and Maureen asked for the same.
“We’ve been so busy with the game show and everything else,” she said, “I’ve almost forgotten I was on vacation.”
“I posted that group pic on my social media pages,” Howard said. “I’m already getting likes.” He squinted at his phone.
“Something wrong?” Victoria asked.
“The first person who liked it was named Désirée. I think she’s the same woman who’s been sending me all those weird texts. I’m beginning to think I picked up a stalker.”
* * *
I was carrying my shoes and walking barefoot in the wet sand after convincing Maureen and Victoria to join me for an after-dinner stroll along Paradise Cove while the guys explored the pier.
On our walk back, I could see them leaning along the white railing while Howard pointed at a spot in the surf.
I squinted at the waves, trying to figure out what had drawn their attention, when a whale suddenly broke the surface, putting on a show most aquariums would be jealous of.
“Wow,” Maureen said. “I wish I’d had my camera ready.”
“I had a client last year,” Victoria said. “Interesting woman. She claimed to be a bit of a spiritualist, and she was really into the symbolism of whales. She told me that seeing a whale break the water like that was a powerful omen.”
“Good or bad?” Maureen asked.
“Good,” Victoria said. “Let’s see if I can remember all the possible meanings. One was healing. Wisdom. Truth. Protection. There was more, I think.”
“Wisdom,” Maureen echoed. “Maybe that will help in the competition tomorrow.”
Victoria had stopped in her tracks and was staring up at the dock where the men had been standing. We were too far away to hear what was being said, but a young woman in a brightly colored sundress had dashed up the pier and thrown her arms tightly around Howard.
To his credit, Howard didn’t seem to invite her attention and did his best to disentangle himself. As he managed to put her at arm’s length, the wind caught her sundress, whipping it against her, clearly revealing the silhouette of a woman in the middle stages of pregnancy.
“Anyone you know?” I asked Victoria.
She shrugged but didn’t answer, her eyes still locked on the pier.
“I’m sure it’s completely innocent,” I said. “An old friend, maybe.” I took her arm, and we began to walk again in the direction of the pier. “No sense standing here and letting you imagine the worst. Let’s go find out who she is.”
Not that I put much stock in omens, but with what potentially lay ahead for Victoria, our team, and Lieutenant Caceras’s investigation, I hoped wisdom, truth, and protection would bear out.