Free Behind the Seams by Betty Hechtman

Nell. I agree with you. Just because the cops let her go doesn’t mean its over.”
    “CeeCee’s worried, too. She pulled me aside before they left and asked—well, begged me really—to get Nell off the hook. I think CeeCee is concerned about her own reputation, too.”
    “In other words, she wants you to find out who really killed the producer—what was her name again?”
    “Robyn Freed,” I said. The eleven o’clock news had just started on the flat-screen TV that hung over the bar. The anchor went to a reporter in the field. I recognized the street outside the Wolf Brothers Studio. Now the street was deserted and dark except for the camera lights. It was so ridiculous how they had reporters doing live feeds from places where something had happened. The overdressed blond reporter said, “Pandemonium broke out earlier this morning at the Barbara Olive Overton show when, according to witnesses, an audience member jumped up brandishing a weapon.”
    They went to tape, and suddenly it was daylight and audience members were trickling out of the exit. There was another shot of people loitering on the street looking at the line of police cars and an ambulance. This short scene kept playing over and over as the reporter continued doing a voice-over. “The woman was escorted from the show and details are sketchy, but apparently paramedics and police were called in.”
    “Pandemonium?” I said. I started to go on about how ridiculous the newscast was but stopped to hear the reporter.
    “Unconfirmed rumors said that Ms. Overton had been taken hostage by the crazed fan. We tried contacting the production offices, but they were being tight-lipped about information and would only say there’d been an incident.”
    After they’d repeated the scene of the audience leaving for the umpteenth time, they finally went back to the reporter standing in the dark.
    “Can you believe they call that news?” I said. “They play a meaningless scene over and over and offer a story I know is absolutely not true. Whatever happened to getting the facts?”
    Dinah and I did a knuckle bump in agreement. Apparently somebody else in the restaurant wasn’t happy with the news, either, and the station abruptly changed to one of those entertainment news shows.
    The waitress brought us another hot circle of bread. I pulled off a piece and dipped it in the garbanzo bean puree. “Look,” I said, pointing at the huge screen. The screen had flashed the show’s logo before going to a scene that looked similar to the news program we’d just been watching. Pierce Sheraton was standing on the street outside the studio. He was the hottest entertainment reporter at the moment—so hot that the show was called Pierce Sheraton’s Entertainment Zone . As was his trademark, the tall lanky reporter was wearing a black tee shirt over dark-washed jeans. He’d been known to show up at award shows in the same outfit with a tuxedo jacket thrown on top. He had shaggy hair and a smirky attitude. For a moment, the screen showed the Barbara Olive Overton show, and I was curious what his report on the incident was going to be. When the shot went back to the street, he’d been joined by a tall woman with sharp features and a severe, short haircut.
    “Rumors are swirling about what happened at the Barbara Olive Overton show this morning,” Pierce said to the camera, “but once again, Entertainment Zone has the real story. This is Talia Canon.” He gestured toward the woman standing next to him. “She’s an assistant producer on the show and has the inside scoop. Talia, tell us what happened.” Pierce put the microphone in front of Talia, and she proceeded to explain that one of the segment producers on the show had died under suspicious circumstances. Pierce asked her for the person’s name, but she wouldn’t give it. She’d heard the cops were still looking for her next of kin and thought there was some kind of rule about not making a dead person’s