The Fatal Funnel Cake Page 20

  “I hope you’re right,” Phyllis said. “This may be out of line, but . . . would you mind letting us take a peek in there? I’ve never seen the inside of a television production truck before.”

  Farrar laughed. “It’s not like it’s that interesting.”

  “Not to you, maybe, but it’s all new to me.”

  “Well, sure, I can understand that. And I’ve got a few minutes.” He took some keys out of his pocket. “But it’ll have to be quick.”

  “You keep it locked up all the time?” Phyllis asked as Farrar inserted one of the keys in the door he had used.

  “Have to. There’s a lot of expensive equipment inside.” Farrar opened the door. “Watch your step when you come in.”

  Phyllis climbed the portable steps that had been set down beside the RV. Sam followed her. They entered something that looked like the control center at NASA, at least to Phyllis’s eye. There were a lot of monitor screens, computer keyboards, consoles full of dials and switches and levers and gauges.

  The same thought must have gone through Sam’s mind, because he said, “Looks like you could launch a rocket from in here.”

  “Well, we can communicate with satellites, but no rocket launches,” Farrar said. “Do you want me to try to explain all the equipment to you?”

  “That’s not necessary,” Phyllis told him. “In fact, just thinking about what all of it must do sort of makes my head hurt. I’m not that technologically inclined. But it certainly looks impressive.”

  Farrar pointed to the screens in front of one of the consoles. “The main thing is that each of those screens is fed by one of the cameras. That’s where I sit and switch between them. That determines how they move and which shot goes out on the broadcast.”

  “You talk to the cameramen over headphones?” Sam asked.

  “Yep.”

  Phyllis said, “That must be a stressful job, keeping track of all that. Like an air traffic controller.”

  “It can get pretty hectic. But I’m used to it, and hey, not to be overly modest, I’m good at what I do.”

  “And you have the Emmys to prove it.”

  Farrar grinned. “Yeah.”

  “What about the production office? It’s in here, too, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, in the back. But I can’t let you look in there.”

  “Oh? Is it top secret?”

  “Not really, but I don’t have the key,” Farrar said. “Reed and Bailey are the only ones who do. Oh, and Joye had one, too, of course. Joye went wherever she wanted to, whenever she wanted to.”

  And from the tone of the director’s voice, it was clear to Phyllis that there was no love lost between Farrar and Joye, either.

  “I’ll bet you had to turn over tapes of all this past week’s shows to the police,” she said.

  “That’s right. Although we don’t actually use tapes anymore. It’s all digital now, stored on hard drives. We burned DVDs for the cops. It’s funny, though, how people still use the word tape when they’re talking about recording TV. Habit, I guess, because we used videotape for so long.”

  “Habits are hard to break,” Phyllis agreed.

  “If there’s anything else you’d like to see . . .”

  “Oh, no, we’ve taken up enough of your time, Mr. Farrar. Thank you for showing us around.”

  “Glad to,” Farrar said. He ushered them back outside the RV. “If I don’t see you again, Mrs. Newsom, it was nice to meet you. Although, come to think of it, we probably will see each other again, won’t we? At Bailey’s trial, I mean.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Phyllis said, although she hoped it never came to that. She wanted the real killer to be exposed long before the case against Bailey ever came to trial.

  As they walked away from the RV and headed toward the entrance of the Creative Arts Building again, Sam said quietly, “You weren’t really interested in all that TV equipment, were you?”

  “No, but it did look impressive, didn’t it? I wanted to find out more about the production office.”

  “Where some of those injector pens are kept,” Sam said. “But the one Bailey used came from Joye’s dressin’ room.”

  “Yes, but if they were tampered with, the killer had to get hold of the ones he doctored up somehow. He could have taken some of them from the production office, removed the epinephrine, and replaced it with peanut oil, then switched them with the ones in the dressing room.”

  “By him, you mean . . .”

  “Reed Hayes had a key to the production office,” Phyllis said. “And he had a motive for getting rid of Joye, as well as a possible reason for wanting to frame Bailey.”

  “Like that lawyer fella would say, that’s a good theory. We’ve got plenty of ’em.”

  “And no proof for any of them,” Phyllis said with a sigh. “I know.”

  They entered the building. Only a few contests would be held in the hall today, and they wouldn’t take place until that afternoon, so the place wasn’t very crowded.

  The sound of hammering drew Phyllis’s attention. It was coming from the side of the hall where the broadcast set was located. Phyllis nodded toward it and said, “Let’s go see what’s going on over there.”

  “Sounds like somebody’s either buildin’ somethin’ or tearin’ it down,” Sam said.

  Phyllis remembered what Bailey had said about how the set could be broken down into components and transported from location to location, so she wasn’t surprised to see that that was exactly what was happening. Half a dozen workmen were busy disassembling the kitchen, which wasn’t nearly as sturdy as it appeared to be on TV. Everything was built of thin plywood so that it wouldn’t weigh much.

  Another familiar figure stood nearby, watching the activity. Phyllis was a little surprised to see Chet Murdock, although she realized there was no reason for her to feel that way. The fair had security guards on duty around the clock, she was sure, and she didn’t know what Chet’s schedule was.

  “Hey, there, Mrs. Newsom,” he greeted her. “I didn’t expect to see you back here.”

  “I know.” Phyllis smiled. “I didn’t really expect to come back, either. I guess I just wanted to revisit the site of my one brush with fame. Or infamy, rather, as it turned out.”

  “What happened wasn’t your fault,” Chet said. “Everybody knows that.”

  “Not everybody. I’ll bet some people who saw the part of the show that aired will always think of me as the lady who cooked the fatal funnel cake.”

  “Well, you can’t worry about them,” Chet told her.

  “Has Mr. Hayes been here today?”

  “He came by a while ago to check on the carpenters. He may still be around somewhere. I don’t know. Do you need to talk to him?”

  “No, not really. What about Gloria Kimball?”

  “Who? Oh, the local TV lady. Haven’t seen her.”

  Phyllis nodded. She hadn’t really expected Gloria to be around. Of the two main suspects in Joye’s murder, Phyllis believed that Reed Hayes was much more likely to be the killer. And the fact that he had been here while the set was being disassembled could be taken to mean that he was checking to make sure that all his tracks were covered.

  That was a real reach, Phyllis told herself. Supervising the work today would be part of Hayes’s job as the producer. She didn’t need to start inventing things to point to his guilt.

  “I’m sure you’ll be sorry to see them go,” she said to Chet. “I remember you said you’re a big fan of cooking shows.”

  “Yeah, but this one didn’t turn out very well. What a tragedy. And they should’ve been able to prevent it. I mean, they knew Ms. Jameson had a bad reaction before. Somebody should have double-checked everything so they wouldn’t have a repeat of what happened in New Orleans. You’d think they would have learned their lesson.”

  “I know.”


  “But I guess the person responsible for checking things is the one they arrested,” Chet said with a sigh. “There’s a big difference between murder and an accident.”

  “That’s true. What do you think, Chet? Do you believe that Miss Broderick murdered Ms. Jameson?”

  “Well, the cops wouldn’t have arrested her if they didn’t think so, would they? I sure don’t know any more than them. As a fan of the show, I just hate to see things end this way. I don’t see how they can carry on, though.” Chet brightened a little. “But maybe they’ll launch a whole new show, get some new blood in there.”

  “I’m sure they will,” Phyllis said. “There’s too much money involved just to abandon everything. They’ll find someone else to be their star.”

  “But it won’t be Bailey Broderick,” Chet said.

  “No,” Phyllis agreed, “right now it looks like it won’t be Bailey Broderick.”

  Chapter 29

  With the broadcast set being taken down, soon there wouldn’t be anything left here to see, Phyllis thought as she and Sam said good-bye to Chet Murdock. They were about to walk away when a couple of workers lowered a section of what had been the back wall of the “kitchen” so that it could be carried out and loaded. That allowed Phyllis to look straight through into what had been the backstage region. The partitioned-off area that had served as Joye Jameson’s dressing room was plainly visible with the wall down.

  Phyllis turned to the security guard again and said, “Do you mind if we go back there, Chet?”

  “Want to take one last look around before it all goes away, eh?” Chet shrugged. “Sure, go ahead. There’s not much left. The cops already cleared out all of Ms. Jameson’s things. I guess they considered them evidence.”

  “Were you ever back there?”

  Chet’s eyebrows rose. “You mean in Joye Jameson’s dressing room? No, ma’am!”

  “I didn’t mean anything improper—”

  “No, no, I didn’t figure you did. It’s just that to me, well, she was like a sports hero would be to a lot of guys. You know? That’s why I meant it would have been a real honor to visit her in her dressing room.”

  “I understand,” Phyllis said. “Who did go in there while you were around?”

  Chet frowned. “Well, Ms. Broderick, of course. And Mr. Hayes. The two of them were in there more than anybody except Ms. Jameson herself. Sometimes Mr. Farrar, the director, but not very often. And that guy Hank, the cameraman. I heard him tell somebody that she liked to go over the way she wanted the show to be shot, which didn’t always agree with what Mr. Farrar wanted.”

  “What about makeup artists, hairstylists, people like that?”

  “Eh, not really. I’m pretty sure Ms. Jameson did her own hair and makeup. That was part of the whole lifestyle thing, you know. It wasn’t just about cooking, even though that was the show’s main focus.”

  “You really were a fan, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chet said. “That’s why it’s been hard to accept that she’s gone.”

  Phyllis and Sam walked around the stage, staying out of the workers’ way, and stepped up to the door of the dressing room. It was open. Nothing was inside except an empty clothes rack where Joye’s wardrobe would have been hung up, a couple of metal folding chairs, and a dressing table with a lighted mirror mounted on the wall above it.

  Phyllis was sure the police forensics team had swept the room by now, or else it would have been marked off. She said to Sam, “Keep an eye out.”

  “You gonna do something clandestine?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  She walked over to the dressing table and pulled out the drawer underneath it where cosmetics would be kept. That was also the most likely place in the room for Joye’s pens to be kept, Phyllis thought. The drawer was empty now.

  “Phyllis,” Sam said from the doorway.

  She looked around quickly. “What is it? Is someone coming?”

  “No, but you might want to come take a look at this.”

  She joined him at the door. He nodded toward the far side of the area where the show had been broadcast. Standing over there, partially concealed by a piece of wall that was still upright, was Reed Hayes. It appeared he was talking to someone, and judging by the grim, intense expression on his face and the way he jerked his hand in a curt gesture, he seemed angry. Phyllis couldn’t see whomever he was talking to.

  Then Hayes’s shoulders slumped slightly, as if he were giving in to the demands of the other person in the conversation. He nodded and said something else, then turned and stalked away.

  “Who do you think he was arguin’ with?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know,” Phyllis said, “but maybe we can find out.”

  She started quickly toward the piece of set wall. By the time she reached it and peeked around the corner, though, no one was there. She spotted Chet Murdock talking to some fair visitors who must have stopped to ask him a question and hurried over to him.

  “Chet, did you see Reed Hayes talking to someone just now?” Phyllis asked.

  “What?” Chet said as he turned away from the tourists he’d been talking to. “Mr. Hayes? Yeah, maybe. I wasn’t really paying attention, but it seems like . . . yeah, he was talking to some woman, over there by the set.”

  “Gloria Kimball?”

  Chet shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Like I said, I didn’t look that close, but I think this woman had red hair. I don’t recall seeing her around before, but she might have been one of the crew. A makeup lady or something.”

  “All right, thanks.”

  Phyllis couldn’t help frowning. Hayes might have been upset for any one of a hundred different reasons, but Phyllis was still trying to link him up with Joye’s murder. The redhead was a wild card, though. Phyllis had no idea who she was or how she fit into the case.

  “Is everything all right, Mrs. Newsom?” Chet asked. “You look worried.”

  “I’m just trying to fit things together in my head,” Phyllis said, “and they don’t want to go.”

  “Like a jigsaw puzzle missing some pieces.”

  “Exactly.”

  Chet shrugged. “When that happens, sometimes you just have to put it back in the box and forget about it.”

  “I know,” Phyllis said with a sigh.

  The problem with that was that if she put this case back in the box, as Chet phrased it, then there was a good chance Bailey Broderick would be wrongly convicted of murder.

  • • •

  Phyllis’s cell phone rang while she and Sam were on their way back to Peggy’s house.

  “Mrs. Newsom, this is David Miller,” the defense attorney said when she answered. “How are you today?”

  “All right, I suppose,” she told him. “Sam and I have been down to Fair Park to take one more look around. They’re taking down the broadcast set in the Creative Arts Building. By this time tomorrow, the rest of the people involved with The Joye of Cooking will be on their way back to California.”

  And with them would go any realistic chance of her figuring out who killed Joye Jameson, she thought.

  “I know,” Miller said. “There’s no reason to hold them here now that an arrest has been made. Did you find out anything?”

  “Not really,” Phyllis said. She felt an uncomfortable stirring in the back of her brain, as if she had seen or heard something important and just failed to recognize it.

  The feeling was a familiar one. She had experienced it a number of times before, when she reached a point where her investigations were at a crossroads, where she faced either success or failure, depending on how she was able to piece everything together. Always before she had succeeded . . . but she had a very real worry that this time that streak might be coming to an end.

  “Well, I’ve found out a few things.”


  “I’m glad, but I thought you said you wouldn’t be able to get any more information out of the district attorney’s office until Monday.”

  “This didn’t come from the DA’s office,” Miller said. “I have contacts in other places, too, contacts that I’ve carefully cultivated over the years.”

  Paid off, in other words, Phyllis thought. She couldn’t blame Miller for that. Some of his actions probably stretched the boundaries of the law, but he was fighting for the best interests of his clients.

  Miller went on, “This tip came from someone in the forensics lab. That autoinjector Ms. Broderick used did contain peanut oil, just like we speculated. Whoever tampered with it really did want to make sure Joye Jameson died. Overkill, so to speak.”

  “That’s a terrible way to put it,” Phyllis told him. “Accurate, though.”

  “Yes, and it’s a good thing the killer took that extra step. Good for him, that is, but not for anyone else. The concentration of peanut oil in the funnel cake was small enough that while it was sufficient to trigger an allergic reaction, it probably wouldn’t have killed her. If the pen had contained epinephrine like it was supposed to, it definitely would have saved her life.”

  “So the pen was the actual murder weapon, just like we thought, not the funnel cake.”

  Sam looked over at Phyllis when she said that. He nodded, as if he had been convinced of that all along. She appreciated his confidence in her.

  “That’s right,” Miller said. “Here’s the other thing I found out. There were no fingerprints on the pen except for Bailey’s.”

  “Well, that’s no surprise. The killer wiped off the pens he tampered with before he switched them out with the ones in the dressing room. What about the pens that were still in the dressing room? Were they doctored with peanut oil, too?”

  “My source didn’t know that, but it seems pretty likely under the circumstances. We’re dealing with a really cunning killer here. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to the extra trouble of switching out the cooking oil and tampering with the pens. That’s pretty obsessive behavior, but like I said, it paid off for him.”