Dial Emmy for Murder Read Online Free Page B

both in his car and heading for my house, “fill me in on this Jackson character.”
    “Jackson Masters is—was—one of the young hunks of the soap world.”
    “What does that mean exactly?”
    “A lot of the time,” I said, “it means not much acting talent but great abs.”
    “A lot of the time?”
    “Jackson had some talent. I think in a few years he would have developed his acting chops and had a decent career.”
    “So who didn’t want him to move on?”
    “You got me.”
    “No ideas?”
    “None.”
    “Come on, Alex,” he said. “You’re my in to the soap world—my expert.”
    “Sorry, Detective,” I said, “but on the set Jackson was pretty well liked.”
    “And off the set?”
    “I didn’t socialize with him.”
    “Did he ever come on to you?” Jakes asked.
    “What a cliché! Not all actors come on to each other! We’re not always jumping in the sack with anything that moves!”
    Jakes was quiet.
    I was quiet, too. The fact of the matter was that soon after I joined B&B , Jackson did hit on me. Or, at least, he flirted. I hated having to tell Jakes he was right, but I also didn’t want to get in the way of his investigation. If Jackson had been killed because of the way he hit on women, then I needed to come clean.
    “Okay, so shut up. He hit on me once,” I said, “but I brushed it aside, didn’t pay much attention to it, and he moved on.”
    “To other women on the show?”
    “I suppose,” I said. “I’m the newest actress on the set, so he had probably already gone through the others.”
    “Gone through?” he asked. “You mean, slept with?”
    “No,” I said. “Yes . . . I don’t know. I mean, maybe he’d slept with some of them. . . .”
    “Do you know which ones?”
    “I’ll have to think about it. If I tell you,” I asked, “will they be suspects?”
    “Maybe,” he said, “or maybe their boyfriends or husbands.”
    Damn. I hadn’t wanted anyone pointing a finger at me last year when Marcy was killed, so I hated to be the one to point at anyone now.
    “Let me think about it,” I said again.
    “You do that,” he said. “Take all night. Get back to me tomorrow.”
    “I’ll try.”
    He pulled up in front of my house and turned off the car. “Dark house,” he said.
    “I told you, my mother is away and has Sarah with her.”
    “Yeah, I remember you said that.” He turned in his seat to look at me. “Why didn’t you ever call me back, Alex?” he asked.
    “C’mon, you know why. . . . I have a boyfriend.” I felt like a teenager in high school.
    “How’s that working for you?”
    I was tongue-tied.
    “Get back to me tomorrow with some names,” he said, turning to face the windshield again. “Nobody will know they came from you. I just need a place to start, and I’d appreciate your help.”
    “All right,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
    “Good night, Alex,” he said. “Nice seeing you again.”
    I didn’t quite know what to say—“Nice to see you, too,” sounded lame—so I just got out of the car, pulling my dirty train out with me, and watched him drive away before I headed for a shower.

Chapter 7
    I opened the door and carefully locked it behind me. I was immediately hit with a blast of silence. My mom had taken Sarah back to the Midwest to get to know her cousins and aunts and uncles at an extended Peterson family reunion. She would be there for at least two weeks. This part was all true. But there was another, more important reason behind the trip.
    A few weeks ago I had received a phone call from my son-of-a-bitch ex-husband, Randy. The guy who had taken money set aside for my early retirement so I could be a stay-at-home mom. He had fled the country and I had not heard from him in three years. He hadn’t always loved me, but he had always loved our daughter. And now here he was calling to say he was coming back to the States in a couple of weeks to see Sarah. I knew Sarah missed him, even though he had left when she