I glanced from Tom to Randy. “How well do you know him?”
Tom stopped pacing. “You’re not actually accusing someone on my staff of doing this, are you?”
Derek jumped in to defuse his anger. “We’re just looking for answers.”
“I know, I know. Sorry.” Tom raked both hands through his hair in frustration. “But maybe Randy’s right. Maybe it was just an accident.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I doubted it. Looking at Derek, I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was. Namely, that there was no maybe about it. Someone had tried to kill off the star of the show.
The EMTs arrived a few minutes later and Randy was taken to the hospital for observation. One of Tom’s assistants followed the ambulance in his car in order to take him home later.
Tom’s sarcastic treatment of Randy had bothered me from the start, but it seemed to roll right off Randy’s back. I supposed they’d known each other for a while, so maybe Randy was used to the snarky comments.
I had one more book segment to tape that night, so Derek and I headed for my dressing room, where I planned to do some quick research on the next book.
“Will you have that analyzed?” I asked when I noticed he was still carrying the coffee cup.
“Yes,” he said. “I smelled something other than coffee, as you did.”
“I smelled peanuts or peanut butter.”
“The most minute smear could’ve killed him.”
I frowned at the thought that Randy could’ve died tonight. “Someone must have dabbed some peanut butter in his cup. Or maybe they tossed some ground-up peanuts into the coffee itself.”
“Good point. I’ll check the coffee urn while you’re doing your appraisal.”
“The first time he told us about the stalker, he was so nervous about it,” I mused as I unlocked my dressing room door. “Now he’s pretending it’s nothing. An accident.”
“He’s afraid,” Derek suggested, following me into the room.
“He should be. This time was different.”
“Yes,” Derek said, adding ominously, “His stalker’s threats are escalating.”
“I agree.” I sat on the swivel chair. “Those other occurrences were creepy and scary, but this is life-and-death. It’s terribly real and he’s got to be more afraid than he’s letting on.”
? ? ?
I held up the lovingly restored, leather-bound copy of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman so the camera could get a closer shot of it. I explained how the book had been made at a bindery in England that had mass-produced thousands of well-made copies of the classics during the fifties and sixties. There were countless numbers of similar volumes available online, although this copy, owned by a woman named Ruth, was in stellar condition. In the end, though, I was only able to quote her a value of two hundred dollars.
Ruth took the news with good grace.
I wrapped up the segment with a word of encouragement to both Ruth and the audience at home. “Not all the books on the show can be appraised for thousands of dollars. I consider myself lucky when I get to work with a simple, nicely bound book that has been well taken care of and will give someone years of quiet pleasure.”
Ruth admitted she’d been given the book by a friend who had inherited it from her mother. The friend couldn’t care less about it so she’d passed it on to Ruth.
“I didn’t pay a dime for it and I’ve enjoyed it immensely,” she said. “To be honest, knowing that it’s only worth two hundred dollars fills me with relief. Two hundred dollars is plenty for a little book like this. If it had been worth thousands of dollars, I wouldn’t feel comfortable having it in my house. Now I can continue to enjoy it and have peace of mind in the bargain.”
Her words reminded me of Stanley Frisch, the book owner who had been so shattered by the news that his Michael Connelly first editions were worth so much money.
When I’d first taken this job, the thought had never occurred to me that someone wouldn’t want to own a rare, valuable book. Now I was finding it was a common sentiment. Which made me wonder again why the people who felt that way would come on a show like this in the first place. If they didn’t want their treasures to be worth too much money, why find out either way?
Were they just looking for a fun new way to spend the day? Probably. I guessed I was taking it all too seriously.
Once Angie cleared us to go, Derek walked me back to the dressing room, where he pulled a half-filled plastic ziplock bag from his pocket and placed it in his briefcase.
“What is that?”
“Coffee grounds from the caterer’s coffee urn,” he said.
“I’m glad you remembered.”
We packed up the rest of our things and headed out.
They were still taping the last segment and there were more crew members working than usual. Most of them were waiting to clean things up on our stage before starting in on their all-nighter next door.
Halfway to the stage door I stopped. “I forgot my raincoat. I have to get it back from Tish.”