Sign Off (Caught Dead In Wyoming, Book 1)

Chapter One

Twice.

At five and ten. Who needs DVR when you have Thurston Fine?

Fine was KWMT's star-of the variety used for a kindergarten pageant. A pattern traced out on cardboard, covered in tin foil and pinned up-glossy, neat and flat. He so obviously ascribed to the shark school of thought that I found myself looking around for Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss whenever we met. Fine hadn't stuck a javelin down my throat-yet-but I figured he was looking for the right opportunity.

As a stop-gap measure he had undermined me, on air and off for the past month.

Last night he'd pulled one of the oldest tricks, stopping, as if he'd decided to leave off the last line of his script, then stepping on my first words as I tried to launch into my intro to the piece.

A good news director would have handled it.

KWMT's news director was Les Haeburn.

Insert philosophical shrug.

"Helping Out" wasn't Emmy material. It wasn't even material enough under Haeburn's dominion to keep me fifty percent occupied. Maybe I would change that, or maybe I would decide I liked it like this. More likely, it would become moot before long. In the meantime, I had plenty of free time to contemplate the niceties of taking a hunk out of Fine's leg. Figuratively, of course.

That's what I was doing when a thin girl with wispy brown hair falling straight at either side of a square face stepped in front of my new professional home, third battleship-gray desk from the windows. Sitting on a chair that only swiveled to the right put me eye-level with this detachment from the second-grade horde.

"Everybody went that way." I pointed toward the control room door. She wouldn't want to miss the comedy of Les Haeburn's steady-hand-at-the-helm routine. Though it might take a somewhat more jaded outlook than a second-grader possessed to see the humor.

"I know."

Her voice was assured. Her eyes, so dark brown they seemed to be all pupil, stayed on me.

Apparently, she had a need other than reattachment.

"Uh, the bathroom's over there." I pointed again.

"I know." She didn't move.

Enough of my contemporaries had beaten the biological clock lately that I knew the ground rules about diapers and babies, but where in the developmental continuum trips to the bathroom became a solo venture remained foggy.

"I'll get your teacher and-"

"You're Miss Danniher."

Being recognized is not necessarily the thrill some people imagine. This time, however, a reprieve from potential bathroom duty offset the discomfort.

As my ex-husband took to saying, everything's a trade-off.

"Yes, I am."

"On TV. Mrs. George from next door said you're a consumer advocate." The girl said the final two words carefully. "So I watched."

That surprised me. From the little feedback we'd gotten to "Helping Out," I didn't think it had any viewers, and here was evidence of two.

When I'd received the assignment, I checked with a few connections, who all said the consumer affairs beat was hotter than ever. But in the four weeks I'd been on-air, I'd gotten a grand total of seven phone calls from viewers, and four were from Ed Radey, who didn't like his wife's cooking and wanted me to "help out." I could come cook or I could take them to dinner, he wasn't particular.