“That’s a wrap,” Melanie said as the strains of “Midnight Confession” faded and an advertisement for an e-company started rolling.
Shoving her chair away from the desk, Sam let out her breath. She’d been nervous during the show. Edgy. Certain “John” would call again, that he’d only phoned her at the house to prove that he could. To scare her. But he hadn’t called in.
But he’d been listening. Waiting. Knowing he was stretching her nerves to the breaking point. After the phone call at her house, she’d decided to bait him. Her program tonight had been about communications, specifically love letters, Dear John letters and even threatening notes though she hadn’t mentioned the card she’d received in her car.
Listener response had been hot, but “John” hadn’t phoned in…yet…There was still time. He’d proven that before when he’d called in after her program had aired.
Though it was after midnight now. Technically Friday—the day after Annie Seger’s birthday.
She turned off her equipment, studied the unlit phone-line buttons for a second, then met Melanie and Tiny in the hallway.
“No weirdos tonight,” Tiny observed.
“So far,” Sam agreed.
Tiny shoved his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “You’re disappointed, aren’t you? You kind of get off when he calls.”
“Get off?” Sam repeated, her temper sparking. “No…but we can’t find him if he hides.” She didn’t add that she wanted to lure him out, hook him, reel him in and then see that he never terrorized anyone again. Yes, in a perverse way, she wanted to know what made him tick, but more than that, she wanted him off the streets, away from the phones and out of her life.
“Do you think he’d really call in again after hours?” Melanie asked as she searched in her purse and came up with a tiny box of Tic-Tacs. “Wouldn’t that be pushing his luck? I mean, he’s got to have figured that you’ve been to the police by now. He doesn’t know that they aren’t tracing the calls—or that we aren’t.” She plopped half a dozen tiny mints into her palm and tossed them into her mouth.
“Maybe the guy knows what a cheap-ass George Hannah is,” Tiny grumbled, then waved his hands in the air. “I didn’t say that, okay? I don’t want to hear about it in the next staff meeting.”
“It’s what we were all thinking anyway,” Melanie said, yawning, as she held up the near-empty plastic box of mints in offering. “Anyone?”
“I’m good,” Tiny said, declining.
“If you say so.”
Sam shook her head. “No, thanks.”
Melanie yawned again. “God, I’m dead tonight. Anyone want to split a Diet Coke?” She was already heading down the hallway toward the kitchen.
“I’ve still got some.” Tiny turned back to the booth to set up Lights Out.
Sam was right behind but had one ear open, listening for the phones. “No caffeine for me,” she said to Melanie. It was one o’clock on Friday morning; Sam’s shift was over for the week, and she couldn’t imagine working on the weekends as well.
“Would you mind loaning me a buck for the machine?” Melanie asked as they rounded a corner and passed by a wall lined with pictures of local celebrities who had been interviewed at WSLJ.
“After you took care of Charon and the house while I was gone? I think I can manage.”
“Good.”
Sam found her wallet and handed Melanie a bill as they neared the kitchen. The first strains of soft instrumental music wafted through the hallways. Lights Out had begun and the phone hadn’t rung. “Has Eleanor mentioned anything about running Midnight Confessions seven nights instead of five?” Sam asked, trailing after Melanie.
“I heard it through the grapevine around her. Gator’s not too happy…” Melanie’s voice faded. “What in the world…Maybe you shouldn’t come in here.” Melanie stopped dead center in the doorway and was staring to her left, toward the French doors. The dollar bill that Sam had given her had fallen to the floor.
“Why not?” Sam craned her neck to look over Melanie’s shoulder.
Her blood ran cold at the sight of the cake—iced in white frosting and supporting about two dozen red candles. “Jesus.”
“This has something to do with that Annie girl,” Melanie said, swallowing hard.
Sam pushed past her and strode to the table. Her head was pounding, her heart pumping wildly. “Who did this?” she asked. “Who got in here and planted this thing?”
“I…I…don’t know.”
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNIE blazed across the white icing in red letters while the candles were burning, red wax dripping down the sides of the cake like rivulets of blood, smoke twisting upward from the tiny flames.
“Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” Sam asked, glaring down at the concoction. She counted. Twenty-five candles. One for every year of Annie Seger’s life and death. “Did you do this, Melanie?”
“Me? Why? Are you nuts?” Melanie shook her head. “I—I’ve been in the booth all night. You know it. You were there…” Her face crumpled in on itself, and she blinked as if she might cry. “…How could you even think—”
Sam wasn’t listening. “Tiny!” Sam yelled, storming to the corridor, her blood pumping hard, anger, disgust and shame spurring her to the booth where Tiny was adjusting the volume and the pretaped program. He looked up, saw her and held up a finger to keep her quiet and at bay. Her fists clenched and it was all she could do not to burst into the glassed-in room and rip him up one side and down the other. By the time he lumbered into the hallway, her fingernails had dug into her palms and she was livid. “You look like you could spit nails.”
“I can,” she bit out furiously. “I found the cake.”
“The cake,” he repeated dully. “What cake?”
“Annie Seger’s birthday cake.”
“Her what? The girl who called in the other night? What the hell are you talking about?” He seemed genuinely perplexed.
“Don’t you know?”
“For God’s sake, Sam, you’re talking like a lunatic.” His face was red now. Anger? Shame? Regret?
Melanie had followed Sam halfway down the hall. “I think you’d better see for yourself.”
“Jesus Christ, now what?” Lips compressed, beads of sweat appearing on his pockmarked skin, Tiny strode through the maze of hallways and into the kitchen. Sam was right on his heels, following him step for step. Around the corner, into the kitchen, to stop dead in his tracks. “What the—Shit.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Sam said.
“But who would do this? How could they?” he asked, turning. His skin had paled, leaving the red blotches of his acne even more pronounced.
“My guess is it’s either you or Melanie. No one else is here.”
“Except the security guard,” Melanie put in.
“He doesn’t even know me.” Sam wasn’t buying it, though, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why either Melanie or Tiny would want to sabotage her this way. Melanie was her assistant and friend, a person she’d trusted to look after her job, house and cat while she was away and Tiny was half in love with her from the minute she’d walked into WSLJ. He was too smart to be reduced to schoolboy antics to garner her attention.
But then who?
Melanie said, “The guard could’ve been put up to it.”
Tiny seemed genuinely disgusted. “Are you accusing me, Sam? You really think I’d do something like this to…to…you?” he asked, a wounded look crossing his eyes behind his thick glasses.
“I don’t know.” It did seem far-fetched. Irrational. If whoever was behind it had wanted to rattle her…mission accomplished.
“And Gator was here not an hour ago, and so was Ramblin’ Rob. I saw him at the record case looking for some moldy-oldy to play tomorrow,” Tiny said.
“The boss was here earlier, too. I saw George in his office, on the phone,” Melanie added.
“Great.” So half the staff could’ve done the job.
“Don’t you trust me?” Tiny asked. His lips folded in on themselves, and he glared at Sam as if she was named Judas.
“Of course.”
“Then knock it off.” He looked like a wounded bear.
“And don’t look at me,” Melanie said, backing up, palms outward. “I’ve been with both of you all night.”
Tiny shook his head and held up a finger. “You took a break.”
“To go to the bathroom, for God’s sake!” she said. “For the first time in my life I wish George was perverted enough to have some surveillance cameras installed.”
“You and me both,” Sam said, then felt the tickle of a breeze against the back of her neck and noticed the muted sounds of the city filtering into the room—traffic, a solitary trombone, the wind sighing through the palms in Jackson Square. Heart in her throat, she walked to the French doors that opened onto the unused balcony. They were unlocked, just slightly cracked. “Someone was in here,” she whispered, goose bumps rising on her skin. “They came through here.” She pushed the doors open and the sound of traffic and voices drifted in with the warm breath of the wind. Laughter and the moan of the trombone.
“They? You think it was more than one guy?” Tiny asked, following her onto the balcony.
“I wish I knew,” she whispered harshly, crooking her neck to see around the corner of the building and searching the night-dark streets of New Orleans. Who had broken into the office and how had he done it? Wrapping her fingers around the decorative railing, she stared across the square to the cathedral, splashed with light, the clock face glowing as bright as a full moon, the tall spires black and jutting toward the dark sky. In front of the cathedral was the park, where palm trees blocked her view of the statue of Andrew Jackson and his rearing horse. The park was supposed to be empty now, pedestrians were locked away from the circular sidewalks at night. Had her tormentor scaled the fence, and was he lurking there, hiding in the shadows, watching her now with hidden eyes?
Despite the humidity, she felt cold from the inside out. “You bastard,” she whispered, her eyes scouring the depths of Jackson Square before she swung her gaze south, past the stately old buildings, along the narrow streets to the levee and the dark river beyond. Was he skulking in a doorway, secreting himself on a small terrace such as this, taunting her silently with his presence.
“I’m calling the security guard,” Melanie said from inside the building.
“Good.” Sam’s gaze swept the railing and floor of the never-used balcony. In the weak light she saw nothing other than pigeon droppings and dirt. “I’ll phone Eleanor on another line. If I don’t, she’ll be ticked. You”—she turned and pointed a finger at Tiny’s chest—“phone the police and make sure that Lights Out is on track—and that no one else calls in.”
“You really think ‘John’s’ gonna call again, don’t you?” he accused hotly. Was there just a hint of jealousy in his voice?
She glanced at the table where the cake was still displayed. “No, Tiny,” she admitted, walking inside and staring down at the rapidly burning candles. “I think he already did.” Bending down, she blew out every one of the twenty-five damning flames just as the phone jangled.
Sam jumped.
“I’ll get it,” Melanie said, but Sam was already halfway to the nearest phone available, at the front desk. Line one was blinking wildly.
Bracing herself, Sam leaned over Melba’s desk and grabbed the receiver. She punched the button. “WSLJ.”
“Samantha?”
She nearly wilted at the sound of Ty’s voice. “Hi,” she said, rounding the computer extension and falling into Melba’s chair. It was so good to hear from him. “What’s up?”
“I wanted to see that you were okay,” he said. “I listened to the show and wondered if you’d like me to pick you up.” At that moment the security guard, a beefy man of about thirty-five, with a shaved head and beginning of a pot belly, walked through the door. “I’ll be fine,” she said into the phone. “We did get a little surprise down here, and I was about to call the police.” Quickly she told him about the birthday cake.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“I’m fine.” She nodded toward the guard. “I’m sure Wes will walk me to my car.”
“Wes, my ass. What good was he when someone broke in? Why didn’t he hear it? Why the hell didn’t the alarms go off? You wait for me and yeah, call the cops. Pronto. I’m on my way.”
“You don’t have to—”
He clicked off, and the light for line one died. “You’d better check out the kitchen,” she said to Wes as she hung up, and then it hit her. Ty had called on line one. Because that was the number listed in the book or available from Directory Assistance. If line one was in use, the calls automatically switched to line two, then three and four depending upon how busy the lines were. Calls could stack up while waiting for a response.
But John had phoned in on line two, even when none of the other lines were busy. Somehow he knew the number. Either he’d been in the building, worked for the phone company, had access to the phone records or he worked at WSLJ.
A cold drip of fear slid through her blood. Was it possible? Was someone at the station responsible for the terror? How else would the cake be left in the kitchen? Either John or an accomplice knew the ins and outs of this old building, understood how WSLJ ran, and had a personal vendetta against her.
Who?
George Hannah?
Tiny?
Melanie?
Eleanor?
She trusted every one of them. And those she knew less well, Gator and Ramblin’ Rob, some of the technicians and salespeople, even Melba. They were all part of her family here in New Orleans.
But one of them hates you, Sam. Enough to scare the liver out of you. She stared at the phone, quiet now, no lights blinking in the semidarkness. The pictures of celebrities, the framed awards, the voodoo dolls and baby alligators all backlit in glowing neon seemed macabre tonight.
Whoever it was who meant to terrorize her had done a damned good job.
Until she found out who was behind the bizarre events of her life in the last few weeks, she’d never feel safe here again.