Air Ready (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 12), page 1
AIR READY
Caught Dead in Wyoming,
Book 12
Patricia McLinn
Love and death decisions
When big-market broadcast reporter Elizabeth Danniher arrived in rustic Sherman, Wyoming, she struggled to adjust to wide-open Wyoming, a small-town TV station, and a betrayal that left her questioning career — and romantic — choices.
After investigating a series of murders, Elizabeth is drawn to both enigmatic rancher Thomas Burrell and her former KWMT-TV colleague Mchael Paycik. But Mike has career aspirations of his own, and Tom’s feisty daughter, Tamantha, is definitely Team Dad.
Now KWMT is for sale, everyone’s job is in danger, no one’s answering Elizabeth’s messages for information, and she’s about to be asked to look into something she’s never investigated before. Can murder — and love — be far behind?
Caught Dead in Wyoming series
Sign Off
Left Hanging
Shoot First
Last Ditch
Look Live
Back Story
Cold Open
Hot Roll
Reaction Shot
Body Brace
Cross Talk
Air Ready
Cue Up
“While the mystery itself is twisty-turny and thoroughly engaging, it’s the smart and witty writing that I loved the best.”
—Diane Chamberlain, New York Times bestselling author
More Patricia McLinn mystery
Secret Sleuth series
Death on the Diversion
Death on Torrid Avenue
Death on Beguiling Way
Death on Covert Circle
Death on Shady Bridge
Death on Carrion Lane
Death on ZigZag Trail
Death on Puzzle Place
The Innocence Trilogy
Proof of Innocence
Price of Innocence
Premise of Innocence
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Copyright © 2023 Patricia McLinn
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-954478-96-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-954478-97-8
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-954478-99-2
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Cover design: Art by Karri
Cover image: Nicolaus Wegner
* * * *
Dear Readers: If you encounter typos or errors in this book, please send them to me at Patricia@patriciamclinn.com. Even with many layers of editing, mistakes can slip through, alas. But, together, we can eradicate the nasty nuisances. Thank you! — Patricia McLinn
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About the Book
Copyright Page
Day One — Friday
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Day Two — Saturday
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Day Three — Sunday
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Day Four — Monday
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Day Five — Tuesday
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Day Six — Wednesday
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Day Seven — Thursday
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Day Eight — Friday
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Day Nine — Saturday
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Epilogue
The Caught Dead in Wyoming series
More mystery from Patricia McLinn
About the Author
DAY ONE
FRIDAY
Chapter One
“I, uh, think I’ll go home now.”
That’s how I announced the midafternoon end of my workday in KWMT-TV’s newsroom. For good reasons, including, but not limited to, that I’d worked enough extra hours lately to challenge a calculator.
First, in resolving a murder, along with several cohorts. Most of those cohorts, joined by more KWMT staffers, then worked with me to produce a special.
That was just the beginning of the extra hours.
As a result of the murder investigation, newsroom staffing had gaps.
I can’t say we had a vacuum in leadership … though our previous leadership did suck.
What they left behind was more like a dustbuster with a dying battery.
But they had filled chairs.
I’d been available for substitute chair-filling over these weeks because the backlog of segments of Helping Out! with E.M. Danniher could dam the Mississippi River.
As far as my non-regular beat went, I figured we were due a long, quiet spell with no more citizens of Cottonwood County, Wyoming, killing someone or getting themselves killed.
We don’t have that many residents to start with. We can’t afford to lose more.
As tired as I was, I’m sure I would have noticed a murder, so I felt safe saying, so far, so good on the no murders front.
All in all, I could use a short day and a nap before tonight’s session of Contributions and Inventions of Native Americans, a community college course I was auditing. That was no reflection on instructor O.D. Everett.
It was the result of devoting too few of my sparse non-working hours to sleep.
A lot of things on my mind.
The station in Sherman, Wyoming — in case you couldn’t guess, the smallest TV market in the country — was on the sales block and the leading candidate to buy it was renowned for closing newsrooms.
Leading candidate? The only candidate I’d learned of.
Ideally, someone would have responded to my going-home announcement with sure, go home, get some rest, you deserve a break, nobody deserves it more.
I wasn’t surprised nobody did. The waiting and not-knowing meant the newsroom bullpen was not a fun place at the moment.
I was surprised Jennifer Lawton said to me, “You can’t. Someone’s coming to talk to you.”
Jennifer’s officially a news aide and unofficially a whole lot more, especially within the small group of us who’ve dug into a number of mysteries in the past year and a half.
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t know her name.”
“What does she want to see me about?”
“She’ll tell you. She should be here any minute.” In other words, Jennifer didn’t want to tell me why this mystery woman — at least I knew the gender of someone — was coming to talk to me, which did not bode well. And in more other words, Jennifer didn’t know exactly when this woman would arrive.
“Have her make an appointment for tomorrow.”
“No.”
Jennifer turned her back to me and resumed her work.
No and a turned back are among my least favorite things in the world. Right up there with Brussels sprouts.
It’s decidedly personal with Brussels sprouts. With no and the turned back it’s professional.
It’s my job to ask questions. Then, as a TV reporter, to make sense of the answers and bring news and useful information to viewers.
I’d done that while my TV journalism career traveled through Dayton, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and New York before crash-landing in — you guessed it — Sherman, Wyoming, for complicated reasons involving the shallowness of TV news, my once-considerable salary, a personal betrayal, pitfalls in my network contract, and the machinations of my vindictive ex-husband. Mostly my ex.
The size of the market doesn’t change the value of questions. They are how we find out things in this world. Especially things other people don’t willingly tell us.
That’s where my dislike for no and the turned back comes in.
These past weeks I’d discovered I also dislike being asked questions when I don’t know the answers.
Make that singular.
When I don’t know the answer.
To the question behind whatever my co-workers said.
What’s going to happen?
To KWMT-TV.
To them.
Owner Val Heatherton put KWMT-TV up for sale because she didn’t want to be tied to embarrassments associated with the station, even though she’d laid the groundwork for the embarrassments. As far as I could tell, embarrassments tangled with murder didn’t bother her. Personal embarrassments dinging her ego did.
The two-pronged what’s going to happen? became more pressing in the past two days since newsroom staff learned what I’d known for weeks. The only known contender to purchase the station was a religious network notorious for closing news departments.
I’d kept that part quiet while trying to discreetly work sources in my scant spare time.
No sense keeping my source-working quiet now.
I had more than a dozen calls out to learn about the network and to plant seeds with potential bidders that a station in Sherman, Wyoming, could be a good buy for a non-news-crushing organization.
The weird thing was it could be, because of an ads market with little competition.
Which reminded me, I needed to ask Needham Bender, the owner, publisher, and editor of the Sherman Independence, if his advertising was as lucrative as KWMT’s. I’d assumed he ran on a shoestring — shame on me.
But I wasn’t calling him now. First, he’d ask a lot more questions than he answered, and we’ve already covered how I felt about that.
Second, I was very busy.
All these return calls to not answer.
I’d started with a carefully crafted list of potential sources. Not too high up. Not too low. Not likely to dismiss KWMT as not worth discussing. Not likely to feel so sorry for me working in a news shop about to be obliterated that I couldn’t stand it.
After a day of no one answering or responding, I expanded the list.
By today, I stretched it to just about anyone I’d ever had contact with in the news business.
Not even Wardell Yardley — who never missed a chance to gossip about the biz — called back. Okay, as White House correspondent for a major network, he was traveling with the president in Africa.
If not even Dell would gossip about KWMT—
No.
He was working. Hadn’t picked up my messages yet. Had picked up a woman (anyone from a member of the host country’s cabinet to a fellow correspondent to a molecular biology post-doc who delivered hamburgers to the media pool as her part-time job. Dell had a knack.)
But what reasonable explanation could there be for Mel Welch not getting back to me?
Mel became my agent two years ago. My former agent proved more than china gets divided in a divorce and chose the network exec staying in New York over the one-time rising star reporter whose burnt-out shell landed in Sherman, Wyoming. Go figure.
Mel, who had never agented before, but has an enviable rep in Chicago legal circles, stepped in. He’s married to my mother’s cousin’s oldest daughter and — even more useful — is terrified of my mother. Most people are.
He did not have great connections in the biz except through me.
I take that back.
He’d had one hard-to-beat connection in knowing deep, dark Heatherton family secrets. With them no longer secret, there went his connection. Pffft.
Although, he’d bonded with a woman in the Heatherton conglomerate who’d overseen aspects of KWMT from afar. I hoped he could work that source for insight to potential buyers.
He hadn’t called back.
Along with every other person I’d reached out to.
Like they were avoiding me.
I am not paranoid.
Not even about coworkers whispering in corners, which might or might not be them wishing I’d kept my nose out of figuring out who committed murder, which then cascaded into this uncertainty.
Nobody said it to my face.
They did ask — repeatedly — what the heck was going to happen, like I had a direct line to all the Jeopardy questions.
It felt like we were in — rather than on — Jeopardy and I not only didn’t know the questions to their answers, but I was sure my buzzer didn’t work, even though I’d had no cause to use it, because — remember this part? — I didn’t have the questions to answer their answers.
Which led to the dialogue I ended by saying I was going home.
That exchange started with Jennifer saying to me, “Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know. Okay? I don’t know,” I said loudly. “Not any better than any of you. Just because I helped figure out what our station owner didn’t want figured out doesn’t mean I know what’s going to happen. Not to mention, why aren’t I asking you, Jennifer? You helped figure it out, too.”
“I was going to ask if you want coffee. Dale’s on a run to Hamburger Heaven,” Jennifer said.
The room had gone still and everyone looked at me. Everyone in the KWMT-TV newsroom bullpen didn’t constitute many people.
I deflated like a pinata hit by a tank. “No. Thank you, Jennifer. I, uh, think I’ll go home now.”
Before I snapped anyone else’s head off.
That’s when she pulled out the somebody’s coming to see you … threat? Bribe?
The Hamburger Heaven coffee Dale brought me was mostly gone when the interior set of double glass doors from outside opened and a young woman walked in.
She wore rugged jeans, work boots, a cowboy hat, and a winter jacket that would have told me she did ranch work even if the rest of her gear didn’t. Ranchers rarely wear ski parkas, puff jackets, lined trench coats. Have never seen one in a car coat or overcoat. They favor tough, multilayered jackets with — most important — multiple pockets.
Her pockets displayed lumps and bumps of essentials kept handy for a job with unpredictable demands.
The KWMT-TV doors led into an open walkway, with the newsroom bullpen to the left. The closest thing to a receptionist was Jennifer or a fellow news aide at the point where the hallway made a diagonal turn to the left, slicing out a space grandly called the break room.
Newcomers advanced well into the building before anyone greeted them. Most walked slowly or stopped to get their bearings.
This young woman went straight to Jennifer. No hesitation. Yet something was off about her walk. An old injury? Recent soreness?
Jennifer greeted her by name — Hailey Newhall.
What was the world coming to when Jennifer Lawton told me she didn’t know who someone was when she did?
No…
Wait.
Boy, was I ever off my game.
I asked Jennifer who was coming to talk to me and she said You wouldn’t know her name.
She was right. I’d never heard of Hailey Newhall until Jennifer said her name.
By the way they greeted each other, I knew they weren’t friends. Not enemies, either.
Jennifer gestured to my desk, then escorted the young woman toward me.
I flashed back eighteen months to Tamantha Burrell standing by this desk and ordering me to clear her dad of murder.
Tamantha must be on my mind from a recent trip we’d taken. That was the only explanation for this connection, because in our first encounter, Tamantha had been a second-grader with wispy hair down the sides of a square face, intense brown eyes, and features not yet in tune with each other.
This young woman in her mid-to-late twenties had wide cheekbones, a strong chin, and slightly larger than average nose. Her features and thick hair with natural streaks of lighter and brighter amid glossy dark brown hit all the right notes.
Unlike Tamantha’s faded plaid shirt and blue sweater, this woman picked jeans and shirt to fit precisely. Unless she was one of those women who walk into a store and find everything perfect for her.
Everything … perfect. The words jangled discordantly even as they formed.
Because of her eyes.
Not their shape or color. Those fell under the perfect column.
What was in them.
Everything not perfect.
Jennifer introduced us, gave me a quick look, then left.
“I need your help,” Hailey Newhall said.
That cut her connection with Tamantha, who favored orders over requests, as I’d come to know well.
“If you have an issue for Helping Out!…”
“I know it’s not something you’d usually look into. But it’s important to people around here and it doesn’t make sense. Why would somebody— Anyway, I thought I’d try.”
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