Read Online Dying to Have Her by Heather Graham - Free Book Online Page B

also met up with Bill Hutchens for a drink. They’d never been partners, but they’d always worked well together. He wanted to make sure that Bill was okay with him on the case.
    “As long as you’re okay with it,” Bill told him.
    “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “Serena.”
    “That’s been over.”
    Bill shrugged. “Hey, you know, I took her out for coffee and stuff after. That was some heavy ‘over’ between you two. But, hey, actresses, huh? They live in a different world.”
    “So it seems,” he assured Bill. They went over a few notes Bill had taken. He learned nothing new, except that he became convinced that if it had been a murder and not an accident, it was definitely an inside job. And a peculiar one at that. No matter how you fooled with equipment, it would be hard to know exactly when it would fall.
    Today Liam was meeting with Emilio Garcia and Dayton Riley, the lighting technicians. Emilio started out not surly but weary. “I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been through this all with the police,” he told Liam.
    Liam had met him briefly before, and he liked the man. A big fellow with dark hair and a dark moustache, he looked like the Frito Bandito.
    “I know that,” Liam told him. “And I know that you and Dayton are longtime pros. That’s why this is such a mystery.”
    “Mystery, hell!” Dayton Riley said. He was me opposite of Emilio Garcia—thin as a beanpole, barely thirty, with carrot-red hair and a face full of freckles. “I’m telling you, Emilio and I are never careless. I could almost swear I watched Emilio on the ladder tightening the clamp on that light.”
    “Hey, I know, guys. Joe Penny told me that you have never had so much as an exploding lightbulb before.”
    They both seemed mollified.
    “Since I can change a fuse and a lightbulb and that’s about it, would you mind explaining some of the setup here? I need to understand what happened,” Liam continued.
    “If you look up,” Emilio said, “you’ll see that we have a ceiling light grid that supports suspended equipment. It’s common in smaller studios like this—especially where we have a number of permanent sets. Lamps, or lights, are clipped, clamped, or slung. As you can see, it’s a tubular, lattice structure. See there—at the far ends of each side? Those are the power outlets, fitted right into the workings. There were two Fresnel spotlights on the piece of grid that went down.” He sighed. “Heavy lights. They were focused on the action at the front table. The light beams had softened edges, making the light blend well with the dimmer lamps that lit the background of the set.”
    “How could the light come down?” Liam asked.
    “It shouldn’t have,” Dayton said. “The grid is permanent, fitted together. If the Fresnel spotlights were properly clamped, their weight could never have dislodged the fittings.”
    “But it did?” Liam said softly.
    Emilio shook his head. “The way I see it,” he said quietly, “a clamp had to have been loosened!”
    “Unless someone had messed with it,” Dayton said. “Not us. I’m telling you, we’re more thorough here than you can imagine.”
    During the whole conversation Liam had been watching them closely, sizing them up. They both seemed genuinely distressed.
    Dayton said, “This could have meant our jobs. Or God knows we could still be charged with something. Manslaughter through negligence or something like that.”
    “The detective, Hutchens, thinks it was an accident,” Emilio said, shaking his head.
    “Well, I guess it’s kind of hard for him to figure that someone would tamper with lighting equipment. I mean, the studio was open, right?”
    “Yeah, but … this is usually a closed set,” Dayton said.
    “Tell me, who was down here, on the set, when the two of you left that morning?” Liam asked.
    Dayton looked at Emilio bleakly. Then he looked at Liam.
    “No one,” he said.
    “What time was it?” Liam asked.
    Dayton looked at