The Morning Show Murders (1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

me, right?"
    "Yes, I am shitting you, Chuck," I said, and headed for my dressing room/office.
    Before I could get there, Gin McCauley, done up in Ultrasuede pants and shirt, Calamity Jane-style, called out, "Billy, mah hero!" She ran to me, hugged me, and kissed me on the cheek. "Thank you, thank you," she whispered in my ear.
    "For what?" I asked.
    "For bein' you," she said.
    Before I could press for a slightly more specific answer, she was on her way across the floor to where our producer, Arnie Epps, was chatting with Lance. Both men stopped talking, looked at Gin, then at me, and frowned. Actually, it was more of a scowl. Two scowls.
    Puzzling over that, I wandered into the dressing room my assistant, Kiki Owens, had been slowly transforming into an office over the past few years. She was seated at a Formica-topped desk, typing away at a computer.
    Kiki is a tiny, thin, seemingly fragile black woman who, though attractive, consists primarily of brain, bone, and muscle. She can get any job done if she puts her mind to it. Her role in life was helped by a British accent, earned by birthright, that, depending on her mood, fluctuated from charming to brutally intimidating.
    She gave me a disappointed look and said, "Today's a 'special' costume show, Billy. And you're late."
    "My bad. I sort of put it out of my head."
    "I got Arnie to sign off on your cowboy costume," she told me. "He gave someone else the Indian outfit."
    "I know," I said, smiling. "Thanks."
    "I told him about your feather allergy. But I don't think he believes it any more than I do."
    "It's just the whole deal--the paint on the face, the feather headdress. I think it's demeaning to Indians. Like asking me to wear a bone in my nose."
    "We'll save that worry for Jungle Day," Kiki said. "Now I think you should change into your outfit and go to makeup as quickly as you can. Lo and Jolly have been popping in and out for the last twenty minutes, looking ever more anxious." Lo and Jolly were our cosmetics artistes.
    The costume that I'd handpicked consisted of a white ten-gallon hat, a black shirt and white string tie, tight gray pants, and black boots. And, of course, a black leather holster with twin shootin' irons. When Lo, a very round Jamaican-American woman who hadbeen with the show longer than I, finished removing my facial sheen and applying a thin mustache, I purposely avoided looking in the mirror. I wanted to preserve the mental image of myself as Herbert Jeffrey, the handsome cowboy star of the old movies my father would pop into the video player when I was a kid. The actor went on to sing with Duke Ellington's band as Herb Jeffries and become one of the top vocalists of the forties, but to me, he'll always be the heroic "Bronze Buckaroo" and "Two-Gun Man from Harlem" who rode the plains on a small black-and-white TV set in our living room.
    Channeling the non-singing Herbert, I galloped through the morning, palavering with the bull riders while howdying the visitors lined up outside on the street, joining trail cook Buck Parminter in rustlin' up some gold-rush griddle cakes, and introducing the C&W singing group The Sons of Sacramento.
    We were nearing the end of our third half-hour segment when I sensed a shift in the on-set atmosphere. Usually, we're crisp, fresh, and a little brittle at the start of the show, unless there's breaking news or a special guest to create an immediate burst of energy. Toward the end of the first half-hour segment, we've loosened up a bit. During the third half-hour we're relaxed enough to goof around.
    But not that day.
    I noticed there was whispering among the crew members and a tension in the air. At the start of the show, coanchors Lance and Gin had been gleefully outdrawing each other. Now it looked as if they wished they were carrying real guns. When news anchor Tori Dillard delivered a report on progress in the Middle East peace talks, she sounded so glum, you'd have thought a new war had broken out. Chuck Slater,