Murder in Real Time Read online

  A crooked smile split his face. “I remember you. You look different. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.” He whistled and nudged me with an elbow. “What’ve you been up to?”

  Adrian nosed in. “What did you say is happening in there?”

  Fellows dropped his congenial expression. “Do I know you?”

  “No. I’m Adrian Davis. This is my house. The Watchers rented it for their Halloween special.”

  Fellows hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and turned his face to me, ignoring Adrian. “Can you believe this show? It’s like the whole production’s cursed.”

  I nodded. I didn’t believe in curses, but it certainly looked like a curse the way the week had unfolded. “Did something else happen?”

  He lifted his chin. “Anna Copeland’s dad has the producer hostage. Anna died earlier this week. A real shame.”

  “Oh, no.” I hurried around Fellows and across the lawn. I powered past a line of agents on the sidewalk and landed on the porch beside Fargas.

  Fargas rubbed his face with both palms. “Patience, what are you doing here? We’ve got this covered.”

  “Mr. Copeland,” I called. “Mr. Copeland? Can we talk?”

  Fargas shook his head at me. “Are you insane? He’s got a gun.”

  “Who is that?” A voice called from beyond the door.

  I cleared my throat and leaned my head through the open door. “Patience Price. We met yesterday when you were cleaning up the mess outside the bed-and-breakfast. I thought you took a cab home last night.” Mrs. Shuster said she saw him hail a cab and tell the cabbie to get him off the island, but here he was, holding the producer hostage.

  Mr. Copeland’s eyes and forehead appeared around the inside corner. “I remember you. What do you want? You didn’t come here to save this guy, did you?”

  “Jesse Short? No. I think he’s an awful person.”

  Fargas slapped my arm. “What are you doing?” He whispered through gritted teeth.

  I whispered back. “He is an awful person. A really, really bad one.”

  “So, why are you here?” Mr. Copeland asked.

  A Sebastian-shaped silhouette moved across the wall in Adrian’s kitchen. The shadow had his gun drawn. I pressed my nose to the screen door. “May I come in?”

  Fargas grabbed my elbows to restrain me, but I wriggled free. A hand clamped down on my shoulder, and I shot a glance back at Adrian. I’d forgotten about him. I flicked his hand off me. His chin swung left and right. I nodded.

  “Okay.” Mr. Copeland’s voice startled me. “Come in, but only you. No cops.”

  I ducked inside and stopped in the archway to Adrian’s kitchen. Jesse Short was bungee corded to a chair, with socks in his mouth. His bare toes curled against the marble floor. Gross.

  Mr. Copeland wiped his brow with one wrist, waving a handgun in the opposite shaky fist. “I hate this guy. He ruined my daughter’s life. She was a good girl before she met you.” He spat the last sentence in Jesse’s face. “You took her from us. You killed her.”

  Jesse wiggled his head no, no, no. His wide eyes tracked the gun’s every movement. Soft grunts accompanied the panicked expression.

  It was a little evil, but I wasn’t in a hurry to free him. He should stew a while. He should know his ruthless methods of climbing the television ladder harmed people, maybe even killed people. Mr. Copeland wouldn’t hurt him.

  Sebastian moved on silent feet through Adrian’s thick living room carpeting. He locked his gaze with mine and cursed silently. I read his lips and pursed mine. Mr. Copeland couldn’t see Sebastian, but he could see me.

  “Mr. Copeland, you don’t want to hurt him. I read about you online. I know who you are.”

  His expression changed to shock. “What do you mean? What are they saying about me online?”

  “Nice things. I read that you’re a youth pastor, a philanthropist and someone who supports his family. You’re a pillar in your community. Lots of people look up to you, Mr. Copeland, and this—” I waved my arm toward the gun in his hand, “—this isn’t you. It’s not admirable, and it’s not what Anna would want. You were her hero.”

  “You can’t know that.” His voice cracked on each word.

  “Yes, I can. I do know.”

  He blinked through tears and lowered the gun a few inches. “How?”

  I moved closer. “Because I have a dad too. We don’t always see things the same way and he doesn’t always agree with my choices, but he always loves me, and I know that. He’s my hero, like you were Anna’s. You can’t do this, Mr. Copeland. She wouldn’t want you arrested for her. It would break her heart. She wouldn’t want you remembered for one act of violence when you’ve done so many acts of kindness.”

  He sucked air and wiped his face with his unsteady fingers and a sleeve. The whimper in his chest grew into a series of sobs.

  Elisa French slunk from another room and stopped in front of Mr. Copeland. “I’m really sorry about Anna.”

  To my surprise, he hugged her and she cried. “We weren’t always close, but I loved her too, you know? I’m really sorry. I know Patience is right. She wouldn’t want this for you. You should listen to her.”

  Elisa repositioned her arms, burying her face in his neck, and the gun clattered to the floor. Sebastian swept it off the ground, shook his head and secured it in his waistband. Fargas caught Mr. Copeland by the wrist in a silver cuff. Cameramen swooped in, angling their equipment at our faces, capturing reaction shots. Boom mics floated in the air, ready to record the smallest sound. Surprise, surprise. Vance Varner materialized with a verbal play-by-play of the standoff, which he’d witnessed from a safe distance. Convenient.

  Against my instincts and despite personal opinion of the creep, I helped Sebastian untie Jesse. My fingers shook with memories of time spent in a similar situation. People fluttered around us, knocking into me as I balanced on my knees.

  Jesse’s mouth moved the minute Sebastian pulled the socks free. “Can you believe that guy?” He stood and brushed himself off as if Anna’s grieving father had given him cooties. “Did you get all that?” He looked from camera to camera for assurance. One cameraman gave a thumbs-up.

  “Hold it.” I waved my hands. “I don’t want to be on your show, so make sure you cut me out of any footage you captured today.” I leveled my stare at the cameraman, assuming my odds at intimidation were better with him than Jesse.

  He lowered the camera. “Just today?”

  Sebastian crossed his arms and moved behind me. “What do you mean by that?”

  Jesse and his enormous ego joined our conversation. “Anything taped inside this house is fair game. There’s a sign on the porch. You come inside, you join the show.”

  My tummy coiled. How many times had I been inside the house this week? Too many, if he was telling the truth. I ran down the hallway, turning sideways and galloping between staff and crew.

  Fargas read Mr. Copeland his rights on the porch. I stroked Mr. Copeland’s sleeve as I passed them.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  “Excuse me.” Free from the crowd, I tapped Noah, the blue Mohawk guy, on his shoulder. “Is there a sign out here saying anyone inside gets taped?”

  “Yeah.” He pointed to the wall behind a line of ghost hunters.

  I pushed my way into their group. “Excuse me. Sorry. Pardon me. Dang.” There was a sign. No one could see it through the perpetual crowd, but I doubted that mattered.

  Adrian followed Fargas and Mr. Copeland to the cruiser. I changed trajectory. Adrian gave Fargas a business card and leaned close to his head.

  I marched onto the sidewalk and grabbed Adrian’s elbow. “What was that about?”

  Beads of sweat darkened the hair at his temples and glued a few sparse bangs to his forehead.

  “
Wow,” I said. “You don’t look too good.”

  Adrian shrugged and flinched. “I gave Fargas my attorney’s business card for Mr. Copeland. He’ll get him out of jail before dinner and on a plane home by sundown. Copeland’s got a wife somewhere who’s mourning their daughter and probably wondering what happened to her husband.”

  “You’re a good guy, Adrian Davis.”

  He raised stormy blue eyes to mine, with a deflated expression. “Yeah. It’s too bad about nice guys. I hear they never finish well.”

  I slid an arm around his waist and pulled him to my side. My shoulder fit into the curve under his arm. “I’m sorry I dragged you here. You need rest.”

  “Good. Let’s go home.”

  We ambled onto the porch. “Excuse me. I’ve got a gunshot victim here.” I shooed away a few loiterers and dropped Adrian into one of his rocking chairs. “I’ll be right back. I want to talk to someone and let Sebastian know we’re leaving.”

  Adrian leaned his head over the back of the chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Hey, Patience.”

  “What?” My palm wrapped around the doorknob.

  He pointed at the sign on the wall behind him as a reminder.

  Right. Once I crossed the threshold, I was fair game for taping. Again. I pulled in a long breath and headed for my target. Vance blathered in the kitchen, posturing for the cameras, wiping fake tears and arranging his limbs so that flexing might seem natural, but didn’t.

  “Cut,” I called.

  Everyone looked at me. No one cut. Sebastian snorted in the next room.

  Vance gave me an evil stare. “They don’t listen to you. You’re not the director, and you can’t walk in here and pretend like we didn’t just experience a trauma. That man was going to kill us all.” He looked blatantly into the camera with wide, childish eyes.

  Sebastian leaned around the corner with a gun in his hand. I stopped breathing. He pulled the trigger, and water sprayed through the air, fell short and sprinkled onto Vance’s bare feet. “This is the weapon I retrieved,” Sebastian said.

  I raised my eyebrows. Mr. Copeland had a water gun. “Unless you’re related to the Wicked Witch of the West, you weren’t in danger, Vance.” I aimed a bright smile into the nearest camera. “Vance was afraid of a water gun.”

  “What’s your deal, lady?” Vance snapped.

  “Let me see your phone.” I opened and shut my fingers in the universal sign for gimme.

  Vance made a big show of being a victim but gave me the phone. His wallpaper was a shirtless shot of himself. Shocker. I looked through his call log.

  “You made quite a few calls to this number: 757-555-6519.” I turned the screen his way. “Then you stopped calling that number the day Rick and Anna were attacked.”

  “So?” He grunted and leaned one elbow on the island behind him.

  “So, whose number is it?”

  Vance grabbed the phone. “I’m not telling you anything. Give that back.”

  “Fine. I’ll find out for myself.” I looked into a camera. “I wonder if it was Rick’s or Anna’s phone number he called so many times.”

  Vance squeezed between the camera and me. “Knock it off.”

  “You were losing face time to the women on this show. You couldn’t compete for Rick’s attention anymore. So, what’d you do about it?”

  Elisa stormed into the room, wailing. “Leave him alone. It’s my number, okay?” Her boyfriend, Dan, trailed her.

  Sebastian collected Vance’s phone and read the call log for himself while Vance made a series of desperate stage-expressions.

  Dan glared over Elisa’s head at Vance. “What were you talking to my girl about all those times, Varner?” The mild-mannered surfer’s face took on a menacing expression. He jerked Elisa’s arm. “What’s up, babe? What’s going on here? Tell the truth. Are you cheating on me with this turd?”

  “Take your hand off her.” Sebastian seemed to grow before my eyes. His shoulders squared. He anchored hands on his hips, filling the room with warning. His fierce expression electrified the air.

  Everyone froze.

  Dan dropped his hands to his sides.

  Vance ran upstairs. Dan and Sebastian faced off over how he could or couldn’t touch his girlfriend. Elisa cried. The cameramen split up to cover the action.

  Todd reappeared from the next room and elbowed me in the ribs. “I think your work here is done.”

  Right. Time to go home and plan my next move.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Later that night, Sebastian greeted me with a stern look. “There’s cold pizza on the counter,” I said. It wasn’t my most stellar attempt at a peace offering, but he accepted.

  He went straight for the kitchen.

  I pressed pause on the television remote and followed him. “I didn’t expect you to be back tonight.”

  Sebastian leaned against the counter, appraising me. “You walked into a hostage situation today. The police were there to diffuse the situation, and you still pushed your way into a room with a gun-wielding lunatic. I don’t have any idea how to process that.” He swigged the beer I handed him. “You seemed so much more stable seated behind a human resources desk.” He took another long pull on the bottle and exhaled. “Here, you’re like outdated dynamite. I have no idea when you might detonate next, and you’re killing me. You know that, right?” He rubbed his chest with one hand. “I’ve been to war and came back stronger, better. We’ve dated three months and I have an ulcer.”

  I frowned. “Mr. Copeland hardly qualifies as a lunatic, and he had a squirt gun.”

  Sebastian nodded silently, at what, I wasn’t certain. Despite the nodding, he didn’t seem to agree. He stared at the couch where I’d been sitting when he arrived. “Where’s your sidekick?”

  “In bed.”

  He wiped his downturned lips. “In your bed?”

  I didn’t like the implication or his attitude. It took what little strength I had left not to fight with him for calling me old dynamite. “Yes. In my bed. He was shot. I think that earned him a bed.”

  Sebastian dropped his empty bottle in the recycling bin and opened my refrigerator. He uncapped another beer and sucked the contents half empty before joining me on the couch. I had no intention of speaking to him ever again.

  I pressed Play and watched as Vance Varner escorted two Italian women to The Watchers’ rooftop hot tub. The women giggled and chatted at top speed. He told the cameraman he had no idea what they were saying, and he didn’t care. Anytime the camera came close, he made licking motions and tugged the girls closer to primetime humiliation—a topless dip in the petri dish The Watchers called a hot tub. After what went on in the season one pool, I’d never swim again. Watching the threesome sink into the bubbling pit of bacteria, I squeezed Purell onto my palms and shivered.

  “What are you watching?” Sebastian peeled his work boots off and stretched back against the cushions.

  “The Watchers. They went to Rome for season two. Vance is even more of a pompous creep overseas.”

  “Have you been watching these all day?”

  “No. I started about three hours ago. Season one was only twelve episodes and without commercials, they went fast. Before that I went to a cooking class. I thought the cooking lady invited me over under the guise of cooking but really wanted an undercover counseling session. Turned out, she really was worried about my ability to feed you.”

  “Feed me?”

  “Yeah. We made pumpkin rolls. She said the way to your heart is through your stomach.” I gave him a dirty look. He’d tricked me into talking to him.

  Sebastian looked at his shirt stretched over hard six-pack abs and turned to me. “Nope.”

  Good thing. I hated cooking. All things domestic eluded me. I killed plants, bur
ned toast and bought an endless supply of long-lasting toilet cleaner cubes so I rarely had to scrub.

  “After cooking, I went to a free line-dancing class, so I wouldn’t hurt the feelings of the person who invited me. Line dancing also turned out to be an undercover session. I hate never knowing if I’m on duty or not. How can I bring my A game if I have no idea when there’s a game?” Not to mention I nearly broke an ankle tripping on my borrowed boots. My lack of coordination surpassed all understanding.

  Sebastian rolled the cold bottle against his forehead. “How was the pumpkin roll?”

  I sighed and fell sideways against his chest. “I left it at the line-dancing studio.”

  “Really? That was nice.”

  I rolled onto my back and dropped my head into his lap. My bottom lip popped out as I gazed up at him. “I didn’t mean to. I forgot it.”

  Sebastian patted my head. “One question.”

  “Fine. What?” I hated his questions. They always ended in me squirming and backpedaling out of trouble.

  “I know you aren’t looking into the murders because you promised me you’d let me do my job this time without any meddling.”

  I nodded, eyebrows scrunched. I didn’t hear a question.

  “Why the sudden interest in watching all The Watchers’ episodes? Why show up at the scene of another crime today?” His dark eyes dared me to lie.

  I spun into a seated position and crossed my legs on the couch. Adrenaline pumped through me. I pulled the little gold pillow Claire bought me as a housewarming gift onto my lap and faced Sebastian. “Who do you think is committing all these crimes? One minute I’m sure Vance is behind everything, trying to create more hype for the show, or more drama for his life. The next minute...”

  Words caught in my throat. I couldn’t say the alternative. My brain scrambled away from the thought whenever it came back to the forefront.

  Sebastian took my hand in his. His wide thumb traced the length of my finger. “You think Jimmy the Judge has found me.”

  I stared, unable to think, speak or breathe. That was exactly what I’d worried about every second of the past three months.