Free The Midnight Show Murders (2) by Al Roker

designer glasses were fashionable, highlighting periwinkle-blue eyes while also drawing your attention to a nose that had been cosmetically altered.
    Like Whisper, she was pale. I’d heard that was a badge of honor on this sunny coast, where a tan was the mark of the frivolous or the unemployed. But because of her jet-black, close-cropped hair, her skin seemed almost bloodless, a notion enhanced by lipstick so dark it was almost black. Somebody should have told her that the vampire look was hard to carry off once you passed the forty mark.
    She glanced at a steel-and-gold Breitling watch that looked as big as a sundial on her thin wrist and curled down the corners of her dark red lips in a gesture of distaste. “Chef Blessing,” she said, “I’m surprised that someone with your on-camera experience would treat time so cavalierly.”
    “Sorry I’m late,” I said, “but I had to stop off for a piss. You know how that is.”
    Behind me, Whisper was having trouble subduing a gurgle.
    Surprisingly, Carmen Sandoval seemed genuinely amused. “Considering the extent of your tardiness, I hope you took time to wash your hands.” She thrust out a thin and chalky claw in a gesture of friendship that I accepted, even though her fingernails looked like they’d been tipped in blood. “Welcome to WBC West, Billy,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind the first-name informality.”
    “I prefer it.”
    “I was surprised to hear from Gretchen that this is your first visit to the studio.”
    “The last time I was on this coast, I wasn’t working for WBC.”
    “Well, Vida can serve as your guide,” she said, gesturing to the other side of the office, where a very attractive young sister sat on a plum-colored armchair, smiling at me. Even though Carmen was an undeniably commanding presence, I couldn’t believe I’d failed to notice Vida Evans.
    “Hi, Billy,” she said. “Been a while.” She moved into my arms for a very unbusinesslike hug.
    “I gather you two have met,” Carmen said.
    We had. Several years before in Manhattan. We’d been seated at the same table at a blowout celebrating the sixty-fifth birthday of Worldwide’s CEO, Commander Vernon Di Voss. Vida, then part of the team of reporters covering the White House, had flown in from D.C. with her husband, Congressman Harrison Oakley.
    At the time I’d pegged him as a pompous, “I rose above my ghetto background to become a Princeton graduate” jerk who couldn’t hold his liquor. He took offense at my making polite conversation with his wife, whom he was ignoring in favor of a sitcom starlet with a chest size higher than her IQ. As it turned out, good old Harrison was also a greedhead who, shortly thereafter, got caught in the blowback from the Jack Abramoff scandal. For his crimes, including lying to a grand jury, he went off for a year and a day to the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.
    His conviction turned out to be a good thing for Vida, at least professionally (and I hoped personally). She divorced the bastard and, since his criminal behavior had seriously compromised her effectiveness as a capital reporter, she’d leapt at the offer of an early-morning newswriter and -reader spot at the network’s owned-and-operated affiliate in Los Angeles.
    In relatively few years, she’d made an astonishing series of career leaps until, finally, thanks to an Emmy nomination for her documentary Crack in the Wall of Sound: The Phil Spector Story , she’d settled in as a regular contributor to Hotline , the net’s prime-time newsmagazine.
    “Actually, we met only once,” I told Carmen. “But the effect was profound.”
    I stepped back a few paces to observe Vida. “You were merely beautiful then. Now … wow!”
    “Is it any wonder I jumped at the chance to spend a few days with this lovely man?” she asked Carmen.
    “Whatever spins your Frisbee,” Carmen said as she shoved papers into a briefcase the size of a garment bag.