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remain unlocked.
    “Hi,” said Nellie Lauren and Stella Tibbs—Nell and Stell, as they were called. They were almost always together and, frankly, I wasn’t sure which one waswhich. I’d been introduced to them only once and only briefly, because the writing department seldom hangs out with the contestant department as a matter of security. I couldn’t remember if Nellie was the tall attractive black woman in her sixties or perhaps the bouncy fifty-year-old with the bright-red pixie-style hairdo.
    “Sorry to barge in,” I said. “Greta asked me to wait for her here.”
    I imagined what Greta was going through, back in Tim Stock’s office, her position on Food Freak suddenly threatened by a nasty act of vandalism. My head was pounding, but at a distance. I could almost feel it. I should have stayed there. I should have insisted on helping. I shouldn’t have left her alone with that mess. I should have—
    “…she is, Madeline?” Susan was saying.
    I looked up to see all three women staring at me. “Excuse me?” I had definitely missed something.
    “Greta,” Stell—or perhaps it was Nell—asked, perplexed by my confusion.
    “Know where she is?” Nell or Stell repeated.
    “Um…” Well, that was a bright response. If this was my clever answer to a simple staff inquiry, how the hell was I going to hold my own against the feds?
    “Maybe she’s gone to lunch,” the tall, African-American Stell or Nell replied. She sounded agitated. As a matter of fact, so had the red-haired Nell or Stell.
    “Stell and Nell need to talk to her immediately,” Susan told me. “We’ve called her cell phone, but it just goes through to her voice mail. Either she’s left the phone off or she’s on another call.”
    “Right,” I said, still trailing the conversation by at least three seconds.
    “Hey,” one of the contestant coordinators said, looking at me closely. “You look white as a ghost. Doesn’t she, Stell?”
    Aha! It was the red-haired woman who was talking. Red hair was Nellie. I felt enormous relief. I think I began to chuckle.
    Stella said, “You do look pale. You having trouble, too?”
    “…trouble, too?” I echoed.
    Susan filled me in. “Stell and Nell have to be onstage in ten minutes. Their contestants are giving them trouble. It’s always something.”
    “It is,” Stell confirmed. “I’ve seen it all and I still see something new every day.”
    “What kind of trouble?” I asked.
    “What kind don’t we have?” Nellie asked, running her hand through her short red hair. “Do you have any idea how hard it is doing this last-minute extra show? It’s one hour and we need to find the best contestants, and we don’t have the best. They’ve been used up! It’s killing the contestant department.”
    “I hadn’t thought about that before,” I said truthfully.
    “It’s impossible,” Stella said, raising one pencil-thin ebony eyebrow. “We simply don’t have time to find the quality people we need. We use up to six contestants on every show. Now you go and multiply that times ten shows. Go on.”
    “Sixty!” Nellie picked up the complaint. “Sixty good-looking, outgoing, happy, talented, engaging, sparkling, smart, competitive people. That’s who we have used up all season, Madeline. And now they say they need six more? Just where are we supposed to get six fresh A-plus contestants on such short notice?”
    “And they have to cook,” Stella added, her eyebrow still arched. “Don’t forget they’ve got to cook, darlin’. They’ve got to cook good!”
    “And answer culinary questions. It’s impossible,” Nell said, shaking her head. “We need plenty of lead time to place our ads in the Sunday newspaper. We usually do a cattle call and round up some possibles. We have to screen ‘em all, of course, and hold callbacks. But all that takes time. We can’t pull them out of our—”
    “We’ve used up all our good ones,” Stell continued. “This here season was supposed to