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He stepped into the group. All heads swiveled toward him. Beau said, “Who the hell are you?”
“He’s a camera operator,” Margot mumbled.
“What?” said Beau. “I’ve never seen him before.”
Margot said, “He got into a physical altercation with Kathy right in front of you on Saturday. You don’t remember that?”
Beau turned and looked up at her, fury flashing in his eyes. “Well, excuse me for not noticing every little thing. My wife has just been murdered!”
Kathy said, “People, we don’t have time for this. We’ve got seven minutes.”
Liam’s hands fisted at his sides again. Under his beard, his face flushed. “I’ve worked here since the show started, you jackass, and you’re wrong. Not doing the work she wanted isn’t Claudia’s deepest regret. It’s that she never had children.”
Beau looked as if he’d been slapped. There were a few seconds of perfect, shocked silence.
“It’s true and you know it,” Liam said. “She wanted children.”
“But I—I can’t. She knew that. She knew I couldn’t…you know.”
Liam shot back, “But you could have adopted, and you refused.”
“How the hell do you even know this? You’re nobody!”
Liam’s voice shook. “How dare you?”
“Four minutes, people!” shouted Marissa, the floor director. “Get off my set! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
Noah gently pushed Liam back, away from the set. Everyone else except Beau and the make-up technician retreated to the outer edges of the studio. Someone darted over and made sure that Beau’s microphone was working. Then he was alone on the couch, and someone was counting down: “Live in three, two,” the one was silent, marked only with a hand signal. As soon as he saw it, some automatic process in Beau’s body seemed to take over. A smile perfect for the grimness of the situation spread across his face. He started talking, smoothly and confidently but also with an air of solemnity. It took Josie a few seconds to find the teleprompter. He took a moment to welcome viewers and thank them for tuning in. “I’ve received such an outpouring of support from all of you at home over Claudia’s death. It may seem strange for me to be here, talking to you, when my wife has just been taken from me, but I’ve always been honest with all of you. As you’ve taken comfort in our show, I take comfort in you, the audience. You knew my beloved Claudia almost as well as I did. Who better to grieve with than the people who loved her most?”
Then his smile faltered. He hesitated, blinking at the teleprompter. With far less confidence, he said, “You lovely folks out there have always said how much Claudia and I helped you get through all kinds of rough patches in your life. I come to you today asking you to help me in my darkest hour. I ask you to sit with me for this next half hour and remember the incredible woman who used to sit right here by my side.”
He patted the seat next to him. From where she stood, Josie could see that his fingers were shaking. The print on the teleprompter disappeared. That was as far as Kathy had gotten. It was all Beau now. She sent up a silent prayer that whatever he said was the correct answer. She still wasn’t sure who she trusted more—Beau or Liam. Perhaps neither of them knew Claudia as well as they thought they did.
Beau looked around the set, as if searching for someone. Then he looked at his lap. Airtime ticked by. Kathy hissed something into her headset. Finally, he looked up. “Claudia and I were slated to do an edition of Five Familiar Facts on the air today. I just wanted to take a few moments to really talk about that particular segment. As you all know, the quiz is available on our website. Claudia and I always thought it was a fun and easy way to grow more emotional intimacy between you and your partner. Claudia loved it. She loved the way it started with easy questions and then ended with a very profound question. She used to say that was where the gold was—in those serious questions— because they’re hard to answer and they’re difficult for your partner to confirm or deny. I’ll tell you—” He broke off and pointed toward someone off camera, his confident but appropriately somber smile flickering back into place. “Can I get the last question for today?”
No one outside of the camera’s view moved but Beau nodded anyway and said, “Thank you.” Addressing the viewers once more, he said, “Claudia and I did not know these questions ahead of time. That’s cheating, isn’t it?”
For a moment, he looked confused and then he gave the camera a nervous smile. “Well,” he said. “I’m not sure what happened here. We were supposed to do the anniversary edition, but it looks like this is just a regular question.” He waved a hand at no one. “No, no, it’s fine. I’ll just go with this.” Smiling at the center camera again, he added, “We have to be flexible in life, don’t we? And learn to adapt.”
Josie was impressed by how easily he had adapted to having no script in a high-stakes situation, all while pretending everything had been prearranged and that the staff was in on it.
“Okay, here is the question we were supposed to answer at the end of today’s show.” He pretended to read: “What is my wife’s deepest regret?”
“What do you think he’s going to say?” Noah whispered.
“No idea,” she said under her breath.
Beau looked at his lap and then back at the camera, his face all soft, sympathetic lines. “Folks, if you had asked me this a few years ago, I would have told you that it was the fact that Claudia never got to work with domestic violence survivors. This was a cause near and dear to her heart. Life kind of got away from us. Our practice got busy. Then we wrote the book and, well, you know the rest.” Big smile. “But once Claudia and I got a bit older, some…windows of opportunity passed us by…I will tell you the painful truth. My wife’s deepest regret is that we never had children.”
“He gave both answers,” Noah said.
It was brilliant, although Josie would never tell Beau Collins that. She let out a small breath of relief. Surely the killer had to give him “credit” for getting the answer right. Unless, of course, both answers were wrong. A headache started to throb in Josie’s temple.
Beau continued, “Claudia and I were always so focused on our careers and on helping people like you that we never even discussed it until we were both approaching forty. Then it seemed that it might be biologically impossible for us to have children. We thought long and hard about adopting and in the end, decided that if we were going to do that, to bring a child into our home and into our lives, that child deserved our complete attention. We had to make a decision: keep our work going full throttle and help as many couples as possible, or scale back, adopt, and focus on helping only one person?”
Josie resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
Noah said, “Is this guy really trying to make being an asshole sound noble?”
