Cover Shot (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 5) by LynDee Walker Read Free Book Online

pad out of the console.
    David Maynard. Doctor. Single. Possible girlfriend with a dead husband. A funky, suspicious dead husband if I remembered right.
    My hand flew across the page, my brain replaying the conversations of the past half-hour and hoping like hell there were no details left out.
    Private practice. Maybe the office website had a photo of the doctor. I made a note.
    Pulling my BlackBerry from my bag, I texted Bob an I have something . Maybe a big something, if Charlie didn’t get it before eleven.
    I opened a new message, my fingers still hesitant to type the name “Shelby” into my phone.
    Our copy chief and I had the longest-running feud in Telegraph history, fueled mainly by the fact that she’d always wanted my job (still did), and wasn’t above any means of getting it (until recently). We were at a peace accord of sorts these days. Maybe.
    I stared at the screen. How to ask without tipping my hand? Shelby and I might not be out for each other’s blood anymore, but the quickest way to lose an exclusive is to blab it all over, even in your own newsroom.
    When you have a sec, I need a file from you. Filling in holes. Good. Vague. Send.
    I tapped a pen on the notepad in my lap, my thoughts racing. Sex and money are both great motives for murder, but little Mrs. Eason as the Black Widow? Not a lock, but I’d seen stranger.
    Bing. Which one?
    The philanthropist CEO guy they found down by the river last Christmas . I’d read the story on my laptop while munching cookies at my mom’s kitchen counter, and the memory of being annoyed at Shelby filling in for me on a body discovery was pretty fresh ten months later.
    Bing. Old guy. He had a heart attack. That’s what the ME said.
    That’s what I thought I read. I chose careful words. Updating my files. Do you still have the ME’s report, by chance?
    Tap tap tap.
    Bing. Yep. Want me to put it on your desk?
    I shook my head at the screen, hearing a helpful tone in her high voice as I read the words. So. Weird.
    That’d be fabulous. Thanks!
    I clicked the phone off and dropped it back into my bag, staring out the window at the white marble walls of the memorial. Bruises on the neck were certainly a pointer to strangulation, but it wasn’t definitive. The best I could do was suspected cause of death.
    And I was on the fence about printing the name. Did anyone else have it? Probably not. So why not sit on it for a day or two? Keeping it quiet would score big brownie points with Aaron, and it might keep the family, if there was one, from hearing it on the news before the cops could track them down. Andrews wouldn’t know—or care, as long as I had it first when it did go out. Plus, it kept my research under wraps if I didn’t put the victim’s name in the paper when the PD wasn’t releasing it. I could maybe stay one up on everyone else by digging up everything I could on Maynard before they even knew who he was.
    Solid plan.
    I started the engine and checked the clock: eleven thirty. Four hours until Bob would want to know how much space I needed.
    Thank God for the internet.

6.
      
    Dead end

      
    Journalism in the age of the Internet 104: the World Wide Web knows all. The trick is where to look. I found a photo of Dr. David Maynard in thirteen seconds.
    Then hit a cinderblock wall trying to find out anything else about him.
    My inner Lois Lane found that fascinating. The rest of me found it damned frustrating.
    I tapped my fingers on the edge of the keyboard. No yellow pages listing for a practice. No white pages listing for a home or a business. No results in the galleries of physicians on the local hospital pages.
    After an hour of spelling his name nineteen different ways (yes, the image result came up on the first try, but there are at least nine ways to spell Smith), I was no closer to anything resembling a bio.
    No Facebook.
    No Twitter.
    I clicked back to the photo. Maybe this wasn’t the same guy Mrs. Eason was mourning. Twisting a lock of