Free Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews Page B

yelped his outrage.
    “Christ.” Val jumped up from the editing table.
    BoBo cradled the camera in his arms like an ailing infant.
    Tate’s face was ashen. “Is it broken?”
    BoBo pointed to the smattering of glass on the floor from the smashed lens. “Kinda.”
    The producer sat down again and banged her head on the editing table. “This just is not my day. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
    “Can we…get another one?” Tate asked, looking from BoBo to the producer.
    “BoBo?” Val gave him a pleading look.
    The cameraman stared down at the floor. “It’s after six. The rental house we sometimes get equipment from is closed. There’s another place, in Nashville. I guess I could give them a call. But even if they’re open, and they have one, and they overnighted it to us, we still wouldn’t get it till tomorrow at the earliest.”
    “Call ’em,” she said, her lips pressed together in a grim white line. “But in the meantime, get that fucking dog the fuck out of here!”
    As if on cue, Moonpie, who was now cowering at Tate’s feet, looked up and whined.
    “Come on, boy,” Tate said softly, grasping him by the collar. “Time to go home.”
    Instead of trotting along obediently beside his master, as he would have done any other time, the setter decided to do what setters do. He sat, planting his haunches firmly on the concrete floor.
    “Moonpie,” Tate said, his teeth clenched. “Heel!”
    The dog sat.
    “Dammit, Moonpie,” Tate whispered. Finally, he bent down and gathered the sixty-pound dog into his arms and staggered toward the studio’s rear door. He opened it, stepped outside into the dying sunlight, and ran directly into Regina Foxton.
    Her face was pink with embarrassment. “Oh!” she said, taking a step backward. “You caught the dog. Good. I was afraid—”
    She stopped, seeing the look on Tate’s face.
    “You did this?” he asked. “You let him out of the trailer? Why would you do something like that?”
    “He was howling,” she said, taking another step backward. “Scratching at the door to your trailer. He was frantic. I was just going to let him go to the bathroom. But he got away from me. He ran, and I couldn’t catch him. And then somebody opened the door from inside the studio and let him in. And it was locked. So I couldn’t go after him—”
    “You just shut down my show,” Tate said, interrupting her. “Big coincidence, huh? The guys from the network are down, taking a look at both our shows. Yours goes just fine. Wonderful. Then they step over to watch Vittles, and all of a sudden, my dog gets let into the studio, and all hell breaks loose.”
    “I didn’t intentionally let him in,” Gina protested. “I told you, it was an accident.”
    Tate was crossing the asphalt parking lot in the direction of his trailer at a rapid clip, with Regina trailing behind.
    “Oh,” he said, abruptly turning around to face her. “Oh, it was an accident,” he said, his voice mocking. “That makes it all right that my cameraman tripped over him and dropped and smashed a camerathat can’t be replaced. All with Barry Adelman and his sidekick sitting there watching.”
    “Hey!” she said sharply. She ran up beside him and tugged at his arm. “What are you implying? That I deliberately let the dog out to sabotage your show? To make you look bad and me look good?”
    He didn’t turn and he didn’t look at her, he just kept stalking toward his trailer. “That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
    She stopped and planted her aching feet on the still-hot asphalt. “Just a minute, mister,” she hollered. “You wait just one dadgummed minute.”

Chapter 14
    B oBo looked up from the cell phone he’d been hunched over for the past thirty minutes, furiously speed-dialing every professional contact in the phone’s memory.
    “Uh, Val?”
    She looked up from the laptop, hands pressed together as if in prayer.
    He shook his head sadly. “Sorry. No go for today. Nothing’s available. Not