Dead Air: A Talk Radio Mystery (2 page)

Finally I got to the Last Call slogan: “Remember, at the Last Call Funeral Home, we leave no stone unturned in our quest to help you.”

No stone unturned?
I bet Jim Wilcox helped her with this one. It was just the sort of sophomoric humor that would appeal to the middle-aged sports jock.

“Ready to take a call? Sharlene is still on the line,” Vera Mae said in a sugary voice.

“Bring it on!” I was gritting my teeth so hard, I knew I’d need a bite plate before the day was out.

“Line two!”

“Hello, Sharlene, you’re on the couch . . .”

“Oh, Dr. Maggie, you’ve just got to help me,” Sharlene wailed. “I don’t think I can take another minute of this. It’s just not fair!” She began sobbing and snuffling, a walking ad for divorce court.

“Now, Sharlene, try to calm down and tell me what’s going on. I’m sure I can help you.” Actually, I was pretty sure a good lawyer could help Sharlene a lot more than I could, but for the moment, she was my problem. More muffled sobs. “Is it your husband? Is that what’s troubling you today?”

This provoked an even bigger wail from Sharlene. “He’s ruining my life. My mama warned me not to marry him. I always thought I could change him.”

“Sharlene, you know we’ve talked about this issue before. When a woman marries a man hoping to change him . . .” I allowed myself a small, knowing chuckle. “Changing a man is as likely as—”

“As teaching a pig to fly!” Vera Mae’s voice boomed into the booth. I think I liked it better when Vera Mae confined herself to holding up signs. Her homespun wisdom can be a bit unnerving on live radio, but she has a heart as big as an IMAX screen.

“Thank you for that gem of wisdom, Vera Mae.”

I could hear muffled sobs from Sharlene. “Sharlene, do you remember some of the options we discussed the last time you called? We talked about various strategies you could use in dealing with Walter.”

Vera reached for one of her favorite signs and held it up.

KHATTC.

Translation: Kick his ass to the curb. This is Vera Mae’s surefire solution for an errant husband or boyfriend.

Don’t ask; don’t reason; don’t plead. Just KHATTC.

“Well, I appreciate your help, Dr. Maggie, but somehow I just can’t get up the energy to do anything. And you know, Walter can be real mean when’s he’s been drinking, and he seems to have a sixth sense or something, just like Patricia Arquette on
Medium
.” I gave an involuntary little shudder. There was something creepy and predatory about Walter, and I hoped he never discovered my home address or phone number. I do my best to protect my privacy, but there’s always an element of risk when you do a live radio show five days a week. ZabaSearch will get you every time.

You can’t hide in a tiny market like Cypress Grove. You never know when a disgruntled listener might take offense to your advice and then track you down to even the score.

“Let’s try to stick to the issue of you and Walter, Sharlene. Can you pinpoint a time when things started to go wrong between you?”

“Well,” she said hesitantly, “things have never been the same since he threw me through the plate-glass window last Christmas.”

Hmm. This poor girl needed more help than I could give her on a radio show.

“Oh, no!” Sharlene’s voice rose to a terrified squeak. “I hear him coming, Dr. Maggie. I’ve got to hang up right now. Lord knows what he’ll do if he finds me talking to you. He’s been making some threats and—”

“Sharlene!” A male voice boomed in the background, and suddenly the phone went dead. For a moment, I just stared at the microphone. Poor Sharlene. Would anyone be able to help her? Would she ever find the strength to leave Walter?

Finally, Vera Mae broke the silence. “Are you ready for another call?” She sounded shaken, and for once, she wasn’t making any smart-ass jokes. “I’m leaving a line open for you, Sharlene,” she added softly.

The next couple of calls were routine, and as we slipped into a commercial, Vera darted around the partition and stuck her head in the studio. “Maggie, there’s some nut on line four. He’s got his panties in a twist. I think it’s about that Sanjay fellow we’ve scheduled for later today. He’s making threats. Crazy threats.”

Crazy threats?
We came back from the break and Vera Mae said smoothly, “Take line four, Dr. Maggie. It’s important.”

“All our calls are important, Vera Mae,” I said, confused. Who was on the line and what did he want? And why would he be upset about our upcoming featured guest, Guru Sanjay Gingii? Gingii was a popular radio and television personality. A little nutty, but harmless, in my professional opinion. New Age gurus aren’t my cup of tea, but this guy has a huge following, a book deal, a movie deal, and a syndicated newspaper column.

“You’re on the couch with Dr. Maggie,” I said, swiveling back to the board.

“Your days are numbered,” a muffled voice said. The voice was soft, insinuating, chilling. I swallowed hard, and my mouth suddenly went dry. I felt the skin prickle across my shoulders. “Did you read the note I sent you?”

“The note?”

“It’s in a bright yellow envelope. It was hand delivered this morning.”

I looked over at Vera, who was frantically flipping through the listener mail. She held up a canary yellow envelope with no stamp and waved it at me. Then she ripped it open, read the note inside, and blanched.

“Did you read the note?” the caller persisted.

“Why don’t you tell me what it’s all about?” I said quickly. “We always welcome listener opinions, good or bad.”

A nasty chuckle from the mystery caller. “This one’s bad,” he rasped. “This is going to be the apocalypse.”

“The apocalypse?”

“Like I said in the note, the end is coming quicker than you think. Much quicker. It will end with a bang, not a whimper. It’s the end for you and for those godless Sanjay-ites.”

Sanjay-ites?
Oh, yeah, the people who dressed in white and were followers of Sanjay Gingii. There was something eerie about the whispery voice, and I felt little icy fingers tap-dance up and down my spine. I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman.

I took a deep breath, my mind skidding over my options. Was it best to keep this person talking? Or break off the connection?

I sat there, fraught with indecision as the caller rambled on. I noticed Vera tapping on the window, pointing frantically to one of her famous hand-lettered signs.

This was a new one. She pointed to the note in her hand and then to her sign. She’d written BOMB with a bright blue Magic Marker.

BOMB. I squinted, trying to figure out Vera Mae’s latest acronym.

BOMB. Better Oppose Mixed Beverages? I was stumped.

BOMB. Beer on My Breath?

More frantic pantomiming from Vera Mae. Her face was drained of color and she was sagging against the console, her features slack. I tried to ignore the hard lump that had suddenly formed in the pit of my stomach.

BOMB.

Bomb.
Bomb!
Ohmigod. We’d just gotten a bomb threat. My thoughts scurried through my head like a manic squirrel as I tried to deal with the reality of the threat. Was it a joke? Was it serious? And if there was really a bomb, where was it?

Would there be time to evacuate the station? Should I dial 911 or alert the switchboard first? Or the station manager? Was there some procedure I was supposed to follow?

I looked over at Vera Mae, and now her eyes were ballooning, her mouth open, frozen in horror like the subject of one of those Edvard Munch paintings.

I thought about my mother and my friends and the fact that I was way too young to be blasted to kingdom come.

And then an explosion rocked WYME and suddenly I didn’t have to think anymore.

Chapter 2

I sat perfectly still, trying to process what had happened. Either a meteorite had hit WYME or we’d been bombed. Okay, reality check. This wasn’t the
Starship Enterprise
. It must have been a bomb.

The noise stopped, but I could still feel the vibration slicing through the soles of my feet and snaking its way up my body. An acrid smell filled the air, and my eyes burned as I scrambled out of my chair. The smoke alarms were blasting, filling the studio with a noise like a 747 getting ready for takeoff.

Then all hell broke loose in the studio. Vera Mae screamed and grabbed Tweetie Bird’s cage, making tracks across the production studio with her precious cargo. Tweetie Bird is Vera Mae’s aging pet parakeet, and she drags his heavy metal cage to the station with her every day.

“So it really was a bomb?” I said dazedly. “It must have been; I can smell smoke in the air.” My mind felt as if it had slammed into a brick wall, but the crazy thing was, the smoke smelled familiar. An image of a movie theater flashed into my head for no reason at all.

“Hand me your sweater, Maggie!”

“You want me to take off my sweater?” My hand involuntarily went to the neckline of a short-sleeved raspberry sweater I had paired with some new Liz Claiborne slacks.

“Not the sweater you’re wearing—the cardigan!” she snapped. “I have to put it over Tweetie’s cage before he has a conniption.” When I didn’t react right away, she yanked the cardigan off the back of my chair. “C’mon, girl, time’s a-wasting and you’re standing there like Lot’s wife. Let’s blow this joint.”

“Have you already called 911? And Donna at the switchboard? Shouldn’t we notify the station manager?” I started shuffling through some papers, wondering how to shut down the audio board. What was the protocol at a time like this? We couldn’t just run out the door, could we?

Apparently we could.

“Done and done and done. Now let’s go!”

“Wait!” I opened the mike and slapped the first cassette I could find into the machine. The sounds of Celine Dion filled the air. I quickly turned down the volume and pushed away from the board. Music is good in an emergency, right? Didn’t the orchestra play as the
Titanic
sank?

On second thought, maybe music wasn’t the best choice in this situation. Too late now.

I could hear muffled shouts and running footsteps in the hallway outside the studio. Apparently everyone was evacuating, and through the tiny window in the door, I saw Big Jim Wilcox at the head of the pack. He elbowed the petite traffic secretary, Tammi Ngyuen, aside to bolt through the double glass doors. (Who says chivalry is dead?)

I grabbed my purse just as I heard sirens wailing outside.

Police cars and, from the sounds of it, fire trucks. One of the advantages of living in a small town is that help is always close at hand. Both the police station and the fire station were within walking distance of the studio.

Vera Mae started to open the heavy door to the hallway, and I grabbed her. “Wait! You’re supposed to put your hand on the door first to see if it’s hot.”

“That’s plumb crazy. Anyone with a lick of sense can see that it’s not hot. Didn’t you see that movie
Backdraft
?”

“
Backdraft
. Is that the one where John Travolta played a fireman? I never thought that was one of his more convincing roles, did you? Of course, I never really believed he was an angel in
Michael
. Something about those grungy wings—”

“Sheesh, girl, quit your babbling and get out the door!” She gave me a vigorous one-handed push. “You shrinks are all alike. You talk too much, and you analyze everything to death.”

I headed down the hallway, properly chastised, just in time to see the Cypress Grove FD burst into the reception area, dragging monster gray fire hoses behind them. Smoke alarms were shrieking in the background, an ear-piercing wail that didn’t let up.

The leader, a tall, square-jawed guy who was a dead ringer for Kevin Costner, bellowed into a megaphone, “All personnel are ordered to evacuate the premises immediately. Repeat, immediately. Do not take any personal possessions. Stay close to the walls in a single file. Proceed in an orderly fashion out the front doors. Do not run; do not panic.”

He glimpsed Vera Mae, trotting along with Tweetie in her cage, and reached out a gloved hand to bar her way. “Sorry, ma’am. You’re not permitted to remove that cage from the building. Please put it down and proceed to the exit. “

“Look, sonny,” Vera Mae said, drawing herself up to her full height of five feet two. “If that bird stays, then I stay.”

“You need to vacate the building. That’s an order,” he barked. He’d moved ahead a few feet and started herding the secretarial staff along, when he glanced back and saw Vera Mae slip past the reception desk. Tweetie bird’s cage was still thumping against her leg, and a frightened squawk emerged from under my sweater.

“Hey! I told you to drop it!” the firefighter protested.

“Oh, put a sock in it, Billie Dean Rochester. I knew your momma when she was teaching over at Cypress Grove Elementary, so don’t even think of telling me what to do. Let’s go, Maggie.”

I followed Vera Mae outside, where the rest of the WYME staff had gathered in a tight little semicircle. We stood uncertainly in the hot Florida sunshine for about fifteen minutes, until I spotted a couple of firefighters making their way out of the building.

They’d taken off their helmets and were shrugging out of their heavy yellow coats. So there hadn’t been a bomb after all? Was it just a false alarm? But what about the smoke and the noise of the explosion?

“That song’s enough to drive anyone crazy,” I heard one of the firefighters mutter.

I looked at Vera Mae. “I put on Celine Dion.”

Vera Mae flushed. “That cassette was damaged. It only plays the first cut over and over.”

“So my listeners are listening to ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ over and over?”

“Afraid so,” Vera Mae said. “Wonder what this will do to the ratings?”

A good point. I made an executive decision. I decided to risk going back into the building. I had to change that cassette!