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CHAPTER 1
The first recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster was by Saint Columba in A.D. 565. The most recent occurred just last year.
“There’ll be a sighting every year,” Kristin Daniels muttered as she peered at her laptop. “Wouldn’t want to screw with a multi-million-dollar tourist industry.”
Unless, of course, you were the host of the public television show Hoax Hunters. Kris planned to screw with it a lot.
In fact, she planned to end it.
Kris scribbled more notes on her already-scribbled-upon yellow legal pad. This was going to be her biggest and best project to date. The debunking of the Loch Ness Monster would not only put Hoax Hunters on the national radar—hell, she’d probably get picked up for syndication—but also would make her a star.
“Kris?”
She glanced up. Her boss, Theo Murdoch, stood in the doorway of her office. He didn’t look happy. Theo rarely did.
Public television was a crapshoot. Sometimes you won; sometimes you lost. But you were always, always on the verge of disaster.
“Hey, Theo,” she said brightly. “I was just planning our premier show for next year. You’re gonna love it and so—”
“Hoax Hunters is done.”
Kris realized her mouth was still half-open and shut it. Then she opened it again and began to babble. She did that when she panicked. “For the season, sure. But next year is going to be great. It’ll be our year, Theo. You’ll see.”
“There is no next year, Kris. You’re canceled.”
“Why?”
“Ratings, kid. You don’t have ’em.”
Fury, with a tinge of dread, made Kris snap, “It’s not like we were ever going to compete with Friday Night SmackDown.”
“And we don’t want to.” Theo’s thin chest barely moved despite the deep breath he drew. The man was cadaverous, yet he ate like a teenaged truck driver. Were there teenaged truck drivers? “Cable’s killing me.”
Or maybe it was just his high stress and two-packs-a-day diet.
In Theo’s youth, back when he still had hair, PBS had been the place for the intelligent, discriminating viewer. Now those viewers had eight hundred channels to choose from and some of them even produced a show or two worth watching.
In the glory days Planet Earth would have been a PBS hit. Instead it had played on the Discovery Channel. Once The Tudors—sans excessive nudity of course—would have been a Masterpiece Theatre staple. Now it was Showtime’s version of MTV history.
“Who would have thought that public radio would do better than us?” Theo mumbled.
To everyone’s amazement, NPR was rocking even as PBS sank like a stone.
