Free Flipped Out by Jennie Bentley Page A

doesn’t stop him from giving me a hard time. That’s only when it’s just the two of us, among friends, of course. With the television crew in attendance, he was perfectly businesslike. “Avery. Derek inside?” I nodded. “Stay out here, please.”
    He ducked under the lintel and into the house.
    The crew watched him go past in silence. Adam still looked like he was enjoying the excitement, while Nina was pale as a ghost and kept her arms tightly crossed over her chest. I thought her hands might be shaking. She had moved away from Adam, and now Ted was standing next to her. Not speaking nor touching her, but there, in silent support. Fae had chewed all the bloodred lipstick off her bottom lip and she looked terrified, while Wilson hovered, murmuring in her ear.
    “That was Police Chief Rasmussen,” I said.
    Wilson nodded. “We met him last night. At least some of us did.” He glanced at Nina, who wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was watching the door where Wayne had disappeared, a worried look in her eyes.
    “Will we be able to shoot today?” Fae asked, her voice soft. She glanced at her coworkers and ended up looking at me. I shook my head.
    “I doubt it. Every other time this has happened, the police always take most of the day to process the crime scene. I don’t think we’ll get back into the house until tomorrow. Maybe not until the day after.” If at all, now that the owner was dead.
    There was silence for a moment. Then—
    “ ‘Every other time this has happened’?” Adam quoted. “Do you have that many premeditated murders around here?”
    Calling what had happened a premeditated murder seemed to be jumping to conclusions with a vengeance—I was hopeful it might turn out to be a bit of random violence, almost an accident—but I didn’t contradict him. “You’d be surprised. This has happened to us twice before. Last fall we found a skeleton buried in the crawlspace of a house we were renovating outside town, and just before Christmas, when we were working on the carriage house behind the bed and breakfast, we walked in one morning and found a dead guy on the floor. Both times, it took more than a day before we were allowed to go back inside.”
    “I should call the office,” Nina said. Her hand was shaking when she reached for her cell phone. “Let them know we’ll have a delay.” She kept talking while she pushed buttons, just as much to herself as to us, I thought. “If this doesn’t get resolved quickly, we may have to abandon the project and go on to the next town. We’re supposed to start shooting in New Hampshire on Monday. Hey, Murray.”
    She put the phone to her ear and turned away.
    “Abandon the project?” Adam repeated, his expressive face a mask of horror. “We can’t do that!”
    Wilson responded, “It’s not unprecedented. We’ve had to do it before, when the delays have been too extensive. I’m sorry for you two”—here he turned to me and included the absent Derek in the apology—“but I’m sure you understand.”
    Did I? I mean, Tony was hardly even cold yet, and the crew was already talking about moving on to the next job? Of course, they hadn’t known him like we had—not that I’d known him all that well myself, or liked him a whole lot, if it came to that—but I’ll admit to being a little shocked that they were already making new plans.
    But it would be rude to say so, so I didn’t.
    “Of course,” I said. “You have to keep to a schedule. We’ll just finish the house on our own time if you have to leave. We’ll get paid whether we’re on TV or not.”
    Or—would we? Tony had hired us, and the money for the project was supposed to come from Tony’s pocket. If Tony was dead, would we be able to go on?
    But perhaps this wasn’t the right moment to dwell on that possibility. There were bigger issues going on, obviously.
    “What did your boyfriend say happened?” Adam asked.
    “You heard him, didn’t you?” My eyes flicked,