Dial Om for Murder by Diana Killian Read Free Book Online Page B

happened? The elves stole him away during the night?
    “Everything okay?” she asked as Andy reached her.
    Either his walk or the early morning sun had put needed color back in his face. He was smiling and seemed more like himself.
    “Sure. I just thought I’d take advantage of the peace and quiet.”
    When was the last time Andy had professed a desire for peace and quiet? But then A.J. hadn’t realized how much she needed space to breathe until she had started her new life.
    They went inside and A.J. fixed summer squash pancakes while Andy drank orange juice and stroked Lula Mae, who had uncharacteristically curled in his lap, boneless and somnolent with an excess of sunshine.
    The radio news announcer babbled while A.J. poured pancake batter—she wasn’t really listening until Andy sat up straight and said, “Oh, hell no!”
    “What?”
    “Didn’t you hear that? That thing about Nicole falling out with her fan club?”
    “I know. It’s hard to picture Nicole getting on the bad side of a lot of teenage boys.”
    Andy’s wide blue eyes grew even wider. “What are you talking about?”
    “Well, who else would be in Nicole’s fan club? She wasn’t exactly Meryl Streep.”
    “A.J., we started that fan club. Don’t you remember?”
    “Say what?”
    He said, “Back when Nicole was our client. We set up an Internet fan club for her. She’d just done that horror flick . . . I forget what it was called. The thing about the demon bride. Anyway, she had all these creepy kids join up.”
    “ They weren’t just kids,” A.J. said, her memory belatedly kicking in. “What was her name? The one who took over as fan club president?”
    “Lydia Thorne. What a freak. I almost felt sorry for Nicole—with friends like that . . .”
    Studying his dismayed expression, A.J. said bracingly, “It’s nothing to do with us. I mean, even if Lydia did something—and that’s pretty farfetched, right?—how many presidents of fan clubs actually—”
    “You saw the movie Selena ,” Andy interrupted, and A.J. fell silent.
    After a moment she recovered. “First off, we don’t know that Lydia or the fan club is implicated. The fact that Nicole had a falling out with her fan club could be just a rumor. Secondly, even if Nicole did have some kind of break with the fan club, that doesn’t have anything to do with us—you. Nicole dispensed with our services years ago—not long after she got the role in Family Business .”
    When Nicole had been hired to play Bambi Marciano, she had decided that she needed a more high-profile company to handle her promotion. It had stung a little, but mostly it had been a relief; Nicole was high maintenance.
    “But we set up the fan club. We put Lydia Thorne in place as president of that fan club. If Lydia did have something to do with Nicole’s death, and word gets out . . .”
    Meeting Andy’s stricken gaze, A.J. said, “I guess I could ask Jake if there’s any truth to the rumor. I don’t know that he’ll tell me. He’s not exactly chatty about his work.”
    “Ask him,” Andy said. “If the fan club is implicated, I’ve got some damage control to do.”
    A.J. thought Andy was taking their—his—responsibility in this too seriously, but she had seen the media in action often enough to know that sometimes the most innocent things could be exaggerated into full-blown scandal. Their connection to Nicole’s fan club was well in the past, but they had, in theory at least, vetted and approved Lydia to take over the fan club—which did give Lydia limited access to Nicole. A case could be made that they had not done everything in their power to protect a client.
    They continued to listen to the radio during breakfast, but there seemed no additional news. After breakfast Andy got out his laptop and A.J. phoned Jake. He didn’t answer, but he did call back within a few hours.
    “Hey. Sorry, I was in the middle of something. I was thinking of dropping by a little