A Breath of Dead Air (The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Book 8) (2 page)

“
T
he real challenge
, my boy, is to stay on top of things.”

“Is that a fact?” Rick Dawson murmured, scribbling these words in his little notebook. Though he had a dictaphone set up to capture every last word of his interviewee, he’d discovered that, as a rule, his subjects enjoyed watching the interviewer write down their words diligently.

“That
is
a fact,” the old man said. “Now… where was I?”

Rick raked a hand through his shaggy blond mane, his blue eyes flashing, and read from his notes. “The real challenge is to stay on top of things?”

Being able to read an interviewee’s words back to him was another advantage of the good old-fashioned notebook. Especially when dealing with doddering old fools like the president of Press Corp, one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world. Murphy Roops was clearly well past his expiration date but still clung to his position with all the tenacity of the aged businessman he was.

The reedy octogenarian had founded Press Corp in the sixties, and after a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions now controlled a smorgasbord of cable companies, film studios, publishing houses and newspapers, chief amongst which was the New York Chronicle, Rick’s paper. So in a sense, Roops was actually his employer. Which went a long way to explaining why he hadn’t been in a position to refuse this exclusive interview when his editor had brought it up. He felt duped, however. To sweeten the deal, the editor had told him Murphy Roops had a very important announcement to make. But now, one hour into the interview, there was no sign of an announcement, and with some effort, Rick dragged his attention back to the man’s inane gibberings.

“Things are not always what they seem, my young friend,” Roops was saying. He’d steepled his bony fingers on his mahogany desk. They were twenty stories up, in the Press Corp GHQ in the heart of Manhattan, where Murphy Roops ruled his empire as he had for the past fifty years. He fixed Rick with cold eyes, his face sporting more cracks and creases than a worn-out baseball glove and the same color, too. “Take me, for instance. When you were first led into my office, I’m sure you thought I was some doddering old fool who should have retired from his present position a very long time ago.”

Rick coughed delicately. “Oh, no, sir. Furthest thing from my mind.”

“You can’t fool me, Mr. Dawson,” said the aged businessman with a chuckle. “I can see it in your eyes.” He leaned back in his swivel chair. “I invited you here this morning because I have a very important announcement to make. I just got off the phone with the commander in chief, and I told him the same thing I’m about to tell you. So pay attention, Dawson.”

Rick sat up, his pencil poised, hoping this was finally it. “Yes, sir?”

“I called the president to warn him about the Vickar Bill.”

“Bill who, sir?”

A hint of irritation flashed in the old man’s eyes. “Don’t tell me you haven’t read the news, Dawson. A reporter of your stature? The Truth Bill?”

Rick couldn’t help but grin at that. Job Vickar, some idiot senator from Illinois, had written a bill and quite grandiosely called it the Truth Bill. And possibly as a joke Congress had decided to pass it. The new law encouraged politicians to always tell the truth lest they be punished. So the press had promptly dubbed it the Pinocchio Bill.

“Please wipe that silly smirk from your face, Dawson,” Murphy growled. “This is no laughing matter.”

Rick removed the grin from his noble features. “Of course not, sir.”

“If Vickar gets his way it will be the end of the world as we know it.”

Rick allowed a single eyebrow to tremble upward. Hyperbole, he wrote in his notebook and underlined it three times. “You don’t say, sir.”

“You know as well as I do that if you take away a politician’s right to lie you effectively hobble him. Before long, the entire house of cards comes crashing down. If politicians are forced to be honest Washington will face its worst nightmare! Government shutdown doesn’t even begin to describe it. Can you imagine what will happen when the president himself is impeached for telling a fib?”

Rick cleared his throat. It was time, he felt, to put a stop to this nonsense. “But how will we know the president is fibbing, sir? Or anyone else for that matter? Is Congress installing lie detectors?”

“Good God, Dawson, don’t you know anything? Vickar doesn’t need lie detectors when he’s got his
human
lie detector, does he?”

“Human lie detector, sir?”

The man produced an annoyed grunt. “When Congress passed the Vickar Bill, they appointed a human lie detector. This person is to sit in on all the meetings of Congress. If they catch a congressman or senator in a lie, they make a note of it, and a reprimand goes out.” He held up three fingers. “Three lies and you’re out. Congressmen and senators will see their mandate revoked—their careers effectively terminated. And that’s not all. When the president addresses Congress, the same goes for him.”

A human lie detector? Rick had to admit the old man had a very fertile imagination. “And who might this human lie detector be, sir?”

Roops frowned. “No one knows. Senator Job Vickar is keeping her under his hat for now. But I’ve heard rumors that she’s amazingly accurate.”

“She, sir? This human lie detector is a woman?”

The old man held up his hands. “From what I’ve heard she was born with an innate sense of truth. The inflection of a person’s voice, facial tics, body language… They tell me she’s never wrong. Which is why I told the president to nip this thing in the bud before it’s too late!”

“And how did the president react?”

“He laughed! Can you imagine? Thought it was a great joke!”

Rick had to suppress a sudden attack of the giggles himself. This was too funny! A human lie detector? You couldn’t make this stuff up!

Roops didn’t seem to think it was funny, though, for he made an irritated gesture. “She’s going to catch the president in a fib or two—or three—and then it’s game over for the entire circus up there on the Hill. She’s going to send them all home—the whole lot of them. And when there’s no one left, our government will collapse in a heap of recrimination, chaos, and disaster. And that will be the end of this great country of ours, Dawson. Mark my words.”

Rick didn’t merely mark these words—he scribbled them down. Inwardly he was still snickering, and already had a nice headline in mind. ‘President has Roops on the ropes.’

The interview went on for another half hour, and it soon dawned on Rick that the media tycoon’s big announcement was simply this: some mystery woman was going to destroy the political establishment, and it was up to responsible citizens like Roops and Rick to stop her. He promised the aged businessman he would take this responsibility very seriously indeed, but when he was riding Roops’s private elevator down to the lobby, he shook his head. He decided that this was one article he would never write. The simple truth was that Roops was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, and if his words were committed to print, the old man would become the laughing stock of the entire country. He would talk to his editor and convince him this wasn’t a story worth telling. The Pinocchio Bill? Human lie detectors? Puh-lease!

And as he stepped from the building, he saw that his fiancée had tried to reach him. He listened to his voicemail and immediately forgot all about Murphy Roops and his mad ravings, his mood instantly plummeting to the depths. His best friend Bomer Calypso had just been arrested for fraud.

F
elicity Bell was
on customer duty, womanning the counter at Bell’s Bakery & Tea Room, the Bell family’s flagship bakery on Lake Street. She’d only recently been instrumental in the capture and arrest of a gang of human stuffers—or rather, stuffers of humans—and was still adjusting to the more peaceful life of a small-town baker in Happy Bays, her beloved hometown.

Before taking down the evil stuffers, she’d been overseas, working as a ghost hunter in England. Stirring events had taken place at Castle Windermere in Shropshire. She and Alice and their respective fiancés Rick and Reece had occupied themselves with lending aid and comfort to a gang of recalcitrant ghosts to solve a particularly heinous murder. Here at Bell’s the only thing occupying her time were the demands of Bell’s regular customers, who all flocked to the store daily to worship at the altar of Pete Bell’s baking prowess, which took the form of bread, pastry, and other delicious assorted bakery goods.

And while Felicity doled out freshly baked bear claws, cherry pie, cronuts, pastry hearts, cream puffs, croissants, cinnamon rolls, cream horns, éclairs, and macarons, she kept a keen eye on her smartphone. Propped up against the cash register, the bulky device sat tuned to the New York Chronicle, which had dedicated a ‘Breaking News’ page to the Bomer Calypso case.

Bomer was perhaps not the most intelligent young man Felicity had ever met, but he was definitely one of the nicest, and she could hardly believe he would be involved in something as pernicious as embezzlement. The Calypsos were pretty loaded, so it seemed hardly likely he would feel the need to dip into the company kitty. If young men like Bomer Calypso needed money, they simply got on the horn with dear old dad and the liquidity issue was quickly solved to the young man’s satisfaction.

She wiped the sorrowful expression from her face as a couple approached the counter. A busty young woman with flaming red curly hair, Felicity wasn’t usually one to present a picture of woe and distress, and the difference with her customary joie-de-vivre must have shown in her round face, for Caroline Loosely, one of Bell’s regulars, instantly did a double take.

“Fee, honey!” she exclaimed. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost!”

Felicity groaned inwardly. Caroline, or Lady Caroline as she liked to be called, belonged to Happy Bays’s rich set, and was a notorious tattletale. With her wrinkled old prune face she could have been Yoda’s mother, and she had the ghastly habit of applying bright red lipstick well beyond her thin lips’ natural boundaries. Like a kid who hasn’t learned to color between the lines.

Felicity set her teeth and vowed to keep it casual.

“Everything’s fine,” she said with what she hoped was a pleasant smile. She eyed the cinnamon rolls Caroline had selected. “Shall I wrap that up for you?”

“A baggie will do,” Caroline said with an airy wave of a mummified hand. “We’ll eat it on the way, won’t we, Havelock?” Without waiting for her husband’s reply, she went on, “We like to take our morning walk along the beach—nibbling at our favorite treat. Picking away like little birdies!”

She cackled with laughter, and Felicity did her best to produce a smile. Apparently she failed, for Caroline shook her head in dismay. “You do look mighty peaky, dear. Doesn’t she look mighty peaky, Havelock?” Without warning, she suddenly reached out, and dug her bony fingers into Felicity’s plump cheeks, giving her face a vigorous shake. “Now where’s that healthy pallor, huh?” she exclaimed. “Where’s that pretty blush?”

Suddenly feeling sorry for the fate of rag dolls, Felicity removed her face from Caroline’s iron grip. “I’m perfectly fine,” she said, trying to keep the indignation from her voice. She would have added she wasn’t three anymore, but since customers were always king, she refrained from doing so.

Caroline dropped her voice to a whisper. “Is it that young man’s arrest? Your fiancé’s best friend? Don’t worry, honey. I’m sure he didn’t do it.”

Felicity gulped. “How—how did you know about that?” she asked, genuinely surprised. She knew that Caroline was usually well-informed, but this uncanny knack for reading her mind bordered on the supernatural.

Caroline lifted her penciled eyebrows into two squiggly lines. “It is my
duty
to know, Fee. I am Happy Bays’s emotional ambassador, after all.”

Felicity blinked. “Wait, what?”

Caroline smiled proudly, bearing a set of lipstick-stained dentures. “Oh, haven’t you heard? Mayor MacDonald has appointed me emotional ambassador of this fine old hamlet of ours.” She clasped a hand to her chest. “It is with pride in my heart that I take up the task of making sure the good people of Happy Bays are as happy as clams. I have a psychologist’s degree, you know, so I’m perfectly qualified. Now let me see what I can do for you.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Felicity protested, but the woman was already digging into her Louis Vuitton clutch. She produced a small booklet and handed it to Felicity.

“This is your emotional diary,” she explained. “Every day you will write down how you feel, then read the motivational quotes at the bottom of the page out loud.” She smiled winningly. “I picked them out myself, and they’re sure to bring the roses back to those cherubic cheeks of yours, Felicity Bell.”

Felicity stared at the small booklet hesitatingly. “Oh… kay.”

“Havelock’s been on the diary for a week now, and he’s feeling much, much better. Isn’t that right, Havelock?”

Havelock Loosely, who’d kept in the background, as was his habit, now reluctantly stepped to the fore. He was a stout man in his early seventies, his veined and ruddy features betraying a fondness for drink, his bushy brows, furry ears and wooly nostrils a lack of faith in the usefulness of tweezers.

“I have been using the diary,” he mumbled reluctantly. “And I find it…” he huffed and puffed for a moment, choosing his words carefully, then coughed out, “I find the concept quite interesting. Myes. Very interesting.”

Caroline tapped Felicity’s booklet smartly. “Mind that you don’t skip a day now.” Then she tapped Felicity’s nose. “And don’t think I won’t check. Next week you’ll hand me your diary, and if I find so much as a single empty page, I’m going to have to award you minus points for lack of cooperation.”

“Minus points?”

“Of course! The mayor didn’t merely appoint me emotional ambassador. He also appointed me emotional guard. I have the authority to write out tickets for lack of cooperation.” She straightened her spine, looking quite self-important now. “With the tourist season approaching fast, it is simply essential that our town present the picture of a happy, peppy community.”

Felicity turned the diary over in her hands. She hadn’t owned one of these since elementary school. “What happens when you write out a ticket?”

Caroline’s thin lips curled up into a grin. “Why, you pay the fine, of course.”

And after admonishing Felicity once again not to “leave a single page unwritten”, Happy Bays’s first-ever ‘emotional ambassador’ swept from the shop, her husband in tow.

And just when Felicity was tossing the small diary into a drawer, deciding she had no time for this nonsense, Havelock hurried in again. Quickly stepping up to the counter, he grumbled emphatically, “Don’t do it, Fee! Don’t write a
single
letter in that
infernal
diary, you hear?! She reads it all!”

“Oh, I don’t plan to,” she said, eyeing the man with surprise.

He flashed a quick smile and patted her cheek. “Good girl.”

Then, as quickly as he’d appeared, he stalked off again, and as the door closed behind him, Felicity could see him hold up his wallet and yell, “Found it, honey! Left it on the counter!”

She felt for the guy. If the Guinness World Records had a category for Henpecked Husbands, Havelock Loosely would win it standing on his henpecked head.

But then she promptly forgot all about Caroline Loosely and her silly diary when a ‘This Just In!’ update flashed on the New York Chronicle site. Bomer had just been released from jail. His wife Charlene, Rick’s sister, had paid the one million dollar bail sum, and the young man had walked free.

Felicity heaved a sigh of relief, picked up her phone and started texting a message to Ricky. She looked up when Alice stepped into the store, looking uncharacteristically downcast.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, immediately placing her phone down.

“It’s Uncle Mickey,” the petite blonde said moodily, her green eyes uncharacteristically solemn and her pixie face scrunched up in a somber grimace. “He’s been arrested.”