Free Twelve to Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) by Lauren Carr Page B

framed. That’s more than just simple jealousy. Someone wants you out of the way. Who would want you out of the way enough to kill two people?”
    “Sally Riggleman,” Lenny said without hesitation.
    “Who’s Sally Riggleman?”
    “No-talent comic wannabe at the club—always trying to upstage me,” Lenny said. “Bitch has no talent. It was only her luck that Janice happened to be there when she auditioned and liked her. Said we needed a female comic to balance me out.”
    One of Mac’s eyebrows arched. “So Janice went against you to hire this other comic?”
    Lenny’s temper flared. “I’d always had the say on what comics we hired and what ones we didn’t. We agreed to that when Janice called me out from Hollywood.”
    “Where you were making a big splash,” Mac noted in a tone heavy with sarcasm.
    Lenny whipped up the gun and aimed it to Mac’s forehead. Edith, the barmaid, screamed. With a growl, Gnarly jumped to his feet.
    “Wait, Diablo!” Mac’s eyes crossed to look at the barrel of the gun. “If you shoot me, Lenny, you’ll have no one to help you. So I suggest you put that gun away and tell me about Sally Riggleman and why she’d want to kill Janice, the one who went to bat to get her a job at the club.”
    Lenny hesitated before lowering the gun. “We have an open mic on Wednesday night. Winners of open mic perform that weekend. A few weeks ago, Sally showed up and did this lame routine about women and how they think differently from men and crap like that. Janice happened to be there that night. I mean, like—she’s never there!”
    “But she owns the club,” Mac said.
    “Janice didn’t get it,” Lenny said. “She doesn’t—like…” He threw up his hands with a laugh. “Get this. She thought Sally was hilarious. She was laughing so hard she was crying but—” With the barrel of the gun, he jabbed Mac in the chest while saying in a mocking tone, “Sally doesn’t even use the F-word in her routine. She’s that lame.”
    “The nerve,” Mac breathed. “And people still laughed at her.”
    “She must have had a bunch of friends come in on Friday and Saturday,” Lenny said, “because the whole audience was rolling on the floor laughing their fool heads off, and the next thing I know, Janice is ordering Derrick to sign her on for six months.”
    Mac shook his head. “If Janice did that to me, I’d be first in line to kill her. We need to go pick Sally Riggleman up right away.”
    “Point is,” Lenny said in a low voice. “Sally got a big head over all that and has been nosing around the club trying to work her way into my gig as the headliner and host ever since. Last week, I caught her listening outside Derrick’s office during a private meeting. She’s looking for dirt on me, and I called her on it. I told her that the only way she was going to take my spotlight was to kill Janice because she would never replace me as headliner.”
    Spencer Police Station

    “Is it true?” Tonya sprang up from behind her desk when David came into the station’s reception area. “We have until midnight to find out who killed the Stillmans and we better pray to God that it isn’t Lenny Frost or he’s going to kill everyone in that bar—including Mac?”
    “You’ve been talking to Bogie.” David noticed two men in suits stand up from where they were waiting in the reception area. “Is their son still here?”
    “In the observation room,” Tonya said. “Fletcher finished taking his statement but told him to wait. The other guy, Zachery Harris, the writer—he hurried out of here like he had places to go right after you guys left.”
    She pointed to the men, who David was eying. “These two came in about a half an hour ago. They’re insisting that they have something important to talk to you about.”
    The taller of the two men stepped forward and opened his federal agent badge for David to examine. “Police Chief O’Callaghan, I’m Special Agent Alex Fredericks, and