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that she could have been the last person that he’d spoken to in more than amiable cocktail-party conversation. If she had understood the depth of his anxiety, she would have done something to help. Instead, thinking Innis just needed an opportunity to vent, she’d only listened.
    “It could have nicked the heart.”
    Eliza heard the medical technician’s words and felt anguish along with guilt and responsibility. If she had reacted differently, this horror might have been averted. She tried to remember every bit of their conversation. What had Innis been talking about when he insisted that she cared about right and wrong and said he knew that Eliza would do what needed to be done? What was it that he wanted her to do?
    Instinctively, Eliza felt that someone should be making a record of what was happening. She took out her cell phone and began snapping pictures. Trying to be unobtrusive, she managed to take a few shots before a uniformed Tuxedo Park police officer intervened.
    “No pictures, ma’am,” he said, in a tone that left no doubt he was deadly serious.
    Glancing over at the covered figure that was now lying on the stretcher, seeing the tears streaming down Valentina’s face and her son awkwardly trying to comfort his mother, Eliza didn’t fight. She slid her cell phone back into her purse.
    She wasn’t even going to tell Linus about the pictures, because if the KTA executive producer knew about them, he would insist on using them.
    But for some reason she was glad to have them.

CHAPTER 16

    I n their final conversation in his study, Innis had said he was going to make everyone sit up and take notice. He’d certainly done that.
    It wasn’t easy watching the stretcher carrying his body being rolled out of the greenhouse. There was too much history between them not to feel regret and some sorrow. But there was also relief.
    There would be no need now to eliminate Innis before he revealed everything. He had done that to himself.
    Innis wasn’t going to be around to be the righter of wrongs. Life could go on as it had, with nobody the wiser.
    But what if this act of suicide, so grotesquely executed, was just the prelude to something more? What if he’d planned to grab everyone’s attention before disclosing the devastating thing he’d threatened to tell? What else had Innis planned?
    In addition, there was Eunice to worry about. The maid had overheard all the sordid details and could wreck everything if she came forward with what she knew.
    And something else was troubling. Eliza Blake had never seemed to be one of those media hounds who would take pictures of someone, especially a friend, bloodied and dead on the ground. And yet that’s exactly what she’d just done.

CHAPTER 17

    B .J. D’Elia groaned. “These hours kill me.”
    “Think what misery it would be to be stuck on this shift,” said Annabelle Murphy as she and the producer-cameraman sat in a KEY News Broadcast Center editing room. “Thank God we’re on dayside. It’s bad enough we have to fill in once in a while.”
    “Ever notice that ‘once in a while’ seems to be turning into ‘all the time’ lately?” asked B.J. “Somebody’s always on vacation or on assignment, and we’re stuck plugging up the holes.”
    Annabelle took a sip of the thick, bitter brew that came from the aluminum coffeemaker sitting on a cart in the hallway. “Ugh,” she said after she swallowed. “Remember the good old days when the cafeteria was open twenty-four hours, when you could get a decent cup of coffee whenever you needed it, and there were actually more than enough people to get the jobs done around here?” Annabelle didn’t wait for B.J. to respond. “That’s why we get saddled with this overnight stuff, Beej. The budget cuts. Cutbacks in personnel. Cutbacks in overtime hours. The same amount of work to be done—even more—but fewer people to do it.”
    “Bitch and moan, bitch and moan.” B.J. smiled as he leaned forward and played