Dead Air: A Talk Radio Mystery (7 page)

“Carmela didn’t see anyone else.”

I glanced out into the lobby. “Yes, but someone could have slipped by the front desk if things were busy. See how easy it would be? All they had to do was follow that hallway toward the garden, and then they could take the back stairs and walk right up to his room.”

“I guess it’s possible.”

“Or maybe it was someone in the guru’s own party; you know, one of his staff members. He could have had some sort of confrontation with him, and maybe he accidentally killed him.” I paused, thinking it over. “I bet lots of people had access to his room. He was on the second floor, right?”

“How did you know that?”

“Well, he told me he hated elevators. He said he refused to use one. We were talking about claustrophobia during the commercial break yesterday, and I just couldn’t picture him hoofing it up several flights of stairs. So I figured he’d ask you for a room on the lowest floor.”

“Maggie Walsh, ace detective,” Ted teased me. “You know, you sound like you’re conducting a homicide investigation. For all I know, you could be working undercover as Martino’s partner.”

“No chance of that.”

He grinned and gave me a searching look while I busied myself pouring more coffee for us. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Maggie? You’re not here on assignment, are you? Covering the story for WYME?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” I rushed on. “It’s just that . . . well, you know, I interviewed Guru Sanjay, and I feel terrible that he died. Or was murdered. Right here. In this hotel.”

I felt my face flushing, and I could feel a trickle of flop sweat crawling down my spine. I knew I had said too much. Was Ted suspicious? My mental 8-Ball said: “Signs point to no.” He was slipping his arm around me, big-brother style.

“Hey, Maggie, honey, you can’t let this get to you.” He pulled me close to him for a moment, his voice warm with concern. “Just let the police do their job, and it will all come out right in the end, you’ll see. They’ll find out who killed Guru Sanjay.”

Manuel, the busboy, suddenly materialized next to us. “Señor Rollins,” he said softly. He pointed to the front desk, where Carmela was pantomiming that Ted had to take an important phone call.

“Oops, that’s a call from Corporate I’ve been expecting. I’ve got to skedaddle.” He smiled into my eyes before sliding back his chair and standing up. “I don’t want you worrying over this anymore, Maggie. The police will get to the bottom of it; they’re the professionals, you know.”

“I know.”

He playfully touched the end of my nose, his deeply tanned face breaking into a wide grin. “So I want you to promise me you won’t give it another thought.”

“I promise.” I fake-smiled back at him and for the first time in my life raised three fingers in the Girl Scout sign, even though the closest I’ve ever gotten to the world of Scouting is scarfing down an entire box of Samoas at one sitting.

Somehow I knew he would like the three-finger salute, though, and sure enough, he gave me a big thumbs-up. I made a show of leaning back and reaching for that luscious cheese Danish, the one that had been sitting on the plate all that time, calling my name. I did it just to show Ted how relaxed and worry free I was (even if mildly carbohydrate addicted and maybe even insulin resistant).

I watched Ted hurry over to the front desk and allowed myself a sad little sigh at the way his brown hair looped sex ily over one eye and his broad, muscular shoulders filled out his blazer. There he was: smart, handsome, successful, kind-hearted, and single. Cypress Grove’s most eligible bachelor, everything you could want in a man.

And he wanted—me!

There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for me. This is the guy who surprised me by ordering a special “Beefy Liver doggy birthday cake” for Pugsley from the Sweet Cakes bakery over on Main Street. He sent over the hotel gardener with a bouquet of yellow roses last week, and hand delivered a pot of chicken soup last month when Lark had the flu. He even power washed my deck when I said it was looking a little grungy.

Hell, he’d probably paint my bathroom if I asked him to. So what’s the problem? Okay, maybe I’m crazy. But here’s the hitch.

Call me shallow, but can you imagine having hot monkey sex with a guy who says things like “skedaddle”?

I rest my case.

Chapter 7

I waited until Ted disappeared into his office behind the front desk and watched while he shut the door behind him. There was one person who might hold the key to the puzzle.

Miriam Dobosh, right hand to the guru himself.

After taking another quick peek to make sure Ted’s office door was still firmly shut, I bounced to my feet and trotted along the back hallway to the stairs to the second floor and the Magnolia Ballroom. The double brass doors were closed, but I could hear the soft murmur of voices inside, along with some ethereal music. At least I think it was supposed to be ethereal. It sounded like whale sounds, a mournful elegy punctuated by a series of squeaks that reminded me of Pugsley’s squeeze toy.

Cautiously, I opened the door a crack, only to find myself face-to-face with yet another of the
Sopranos
-type body-guards. He was a Goliath. I’m five-ten, and I had to crane my neck to look up at him.

“This is a closed workshop,” he rasped, all set to slam the door in my face like I was the Avon lady offering him a free lip gloss.

“But I’ve been invited!” I protested.

“Yeah?” His eyes slid over my short-sleeved salmon-colored Tommy Bahama blouse and tan pencil skirt. “If you’re a registered conference guest, go down to the front desk and pick up your name tag.” His tone was brusque and his black eyes glittered as cold and hard as river rocks.

“I’ve got a press pass,” I said quickly. I reached for my pass and found to my horror it was missing. Hoping for the best, I pulled out my laminated Cypress Grove Public Library card and waved it at him. A beat of tense silence fell between us.

He ignored the card, so I shoved it back in my bag. Either he doesn’t read a lot or he was on to me.

“Look, I’m with WYME, and I interviewed Guru Sanjay on my radio show yesterday. We were going to continue our conversation last night and I was shocked to learn he had died.”

This earned me an even icier glare.
Oop
s
!
Nix the word “die.” I’d forgotten that death doesn’t exist in the world of Sanjay Gingii. Time for damage control.

“I mean before he . . . um . . . transitioned to another dimension. He asked me to attend the conference today as his special guest.”

“I don’t know nothing about that.” He had a rough New York accent (maybe Bed-Stuy?) and looked like his nose had been broken a few times. His beefy arms were bulging out of his black Team Sanjay T-shirt, and I couldn’t take my eyes off his neck. It was as thick as a sequoia and decorated with a creepy weird tat that looked like a forest of kudzu vines gone wild.

“The guru and I bonded with each other,” I went on quickly, “and he was going to explain more of his metaphysical theories to me. Today. At this workshop.”

My stomach was pricking with anxiety, and I tried to ignore the stream of pure adrenaline shooting through me. If this Neanderthal wouldn’t let me in, how would I ever gather any information?

“Do we have a late arrival?” A tall woman dressed from head to toe in navy blue polyester appeared behind him. A navy pillbox hat balanced tipsily on her frizzy gray hair, and she looked ghostly pale, either because she was grief stricken or because she wasn’t wearing a smidgen of makeup. She pushed past bouncer guy to give me a quick once-over. From the pinched expression on her face I could tell she didn’t like what she saw.

She was pretty hefty and looked as if she had bought out the entire “slimming collection” from the Home Shopping Channel. Not a natural fiber anywhere on her body.

I hoped no one lit a match around her—she’d go up in flames like a human torch.

“Maggie Walsh from WYME,” I said quickly. I extended my hand, and she reluctantly shook it. A hint of alarm registered in her eyes, but she said quietly, “I’ll handle this, Bruno,” waving the thug away. I tried to peer into the ballroom, but she closed the door behind her and stepped into the hallway.

“Is there something I can help you with? I’m Miriam Dobosh, executive assistant to Guru Sanjay.”

Miriam Dobosh!
I had hit pay dirt on the very first try. An amazing piece of luck. The detective gods were with me.

“I just have a few questions to ask you,” I said, gesturing to a pair of cushy wicker armchairs arranged in a conversation nook a few feet away. I whipped out a notebook and pen before she could change her mind.

“We’re right in the middle of a seminar—”

“It’ll only take a second, honest!” I put on my most winning smile, but I knew that this was going to be a hard sell. “We’re putting together a eulogy for the guru—”

“A eulogy? That’s for dead people,” she snapped.

“Sorry, I meant to say a retrospective.” I paused for a beat, and she lowered herself into the chair next to me. “I just wanted to get a few quotes from you. Something that the guru’s followers would want to know—you know, a personal anecdote or two. I’m sure you have some wonderful memories of him.”

I pulled out my tape recorder and slid it onto the coffee table in front of us.

“I’ll be taking notes as well; this is just to refresh my memory,” I said, catching her frown. I know that people feel intimidated when you whip out a tape recorder, which is why I never taped my psychotherapy sessions with my clients back in New York. But I thought it might give me some journalistic cred (since my public library card clearly wasn’t cutting it).

Miriam was already drawing away from me, leaning back lightly in her chair with her arms folded over her cushiony chest. Uh-oh. Closed body language. I knew I had to act fast to reassure her or she’d snap shut like a North Atlantic clam.

“I want to make sure I capture every word.” I looked straight into her eyes and hoped that she fell for the bait. The guru’s words preserved for generations to come! Who could resist the offer? Apparently Miriam couldn’t.

“Well, I suppose I could tell you a few things . . .”

I let her ramble on for a few minutes, hoping she didn’t notice that the red light on my tape recorder wasn’t blinking. I’d slapped a WYME sticker on it so it would look official but never remembered to buy batteries for it.

“In the last five years, Guru Sanjay’s appeal has skyrocketed. He’s made esoteric metaphysical concepts accessible to a mass-market audience,” she droned, as if she were reading from a press release.

“Hmm.” I nodded, encouraging her.

“He’s become such a pop-culture icon, he’s known all over the world. If you say the name Sanjay, everyone knows who you’re talking about, just like Oprah, Bono, or Dee pak.”

Or Flipper
, I added silently.

I sneaked a look at my watch. There was something oddly flat about her voice, and underneath all the hype, I wondered whether I sensed a note of something sinister in her tone. A touch of jealousy? A flare of resentment? I knew that all was not right with the head of Team Sanjay, and I decided to foster a guess.

In psych terms, they would call this an “interpretation.” You ignore the surface of the speech and go for the subtext, the meaning behind what the client is saying. On
The Sopranos
, this is the point where Dr. Melfi would say to Tony, “So, what I hear you saying is . . .”

“Miriam, it sounds like you practically ran the whole organization. You were the real power behind the throne, the person responsible for his success. I hope that he appreciated you.”

Her eyes flickered with surprise and then clouded. Bingo. Then I realized that I had been as subtle as a brick to the forehead. Time to rephrase or I’d lose her again. “I mean, it’s obvious that the guru relied on you to keep things going smoothly.”

“Well, he did,” she admitted, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle in her polyester skirt. “I’ve been with him from the beginning. When he was just starting out.”

“Really?” I pretended to make a note of it. “Can you tell me something about those early years? When it was just the two of you building his empire?”

“It wasn’t much of an empire back then,” she said, her mouth tightening. “Sanjay was giving seminars to civic groups at community centers. Sometimes there were only thirty people in the audience at a fire hall out in the boondocks in some Podunk little town. Sanjay self-published his first book, and we used to sell copies out of the trunk of his car.”

“But somehow people were drawn to him and he became famous. I bet that had a lot to do with your promotional skills.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” She shook her head, her double chin quivering. “It was Sanjay’s gift that drew people, his understanding of the cosmos and human emotions. I just handled all the administrative details for him. You have to remember, Sanjay was the greatest thinker of this generation, not someone who could be bothered with the mundane details of running a business.”

Hmm. So it seemed that she’d hitched her star to the guru’s many years ago. But where had it gotten her? There was something about her tone that made me think she wasn’t thrilled with being relegated to an outer ring of the Planet Sanjay. I wondered whether her fortunes had risen as rapidly as his. Judging from her shiny polyester suit, they hadn’t.

“So all the books and the podcasts and the teleseminars came later?” I tried to look awed. “You must be a marketing genius. There’s a lot of competition in the motivational field. I know plenty of psychologists who can’t get a book deal or attract a national audience. They have the academic credentials, but they don’t know how to get their name out there or how to connect with people who can guide their careers.” I managed a bashful smile. “I wrote a self-help book myself, and it sank like a stone.”