“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 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 premiere 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 cancelled.”
“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 Smack-down.”
“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 those 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 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.
“Not me,” Kris agreed. And too bad, too. Not that she could ever have done Hoax Hunters for the radio even if she had possessed a crystal ball. The show’s strength lay in the visual revelation that what so many believed the truth was in fact a lie.
Hoax Hunters, which Kris had originally called Hoax Haters, had come about after a tipsy night with her best friend and roommate Lola Kablonsky. Kris had always loathed liars—she had her reasons—and she’d been very good at spotting them. One could say she had a sixth sense, if a sixth sense weren’t as much of a lie as all the rest.
Why not make your obsession with truth and lies into a show? Lola had asked.
And full of margaritas and a haunting ambition, Kris had thought: Why not?
She’d used her savings to fund a pilot, and she’d gotten that pilot onto the screen through sheer guts and brutal determination. She wasn’t going to let something as erratic as ratings get her down.
“I’ll make the show anyway,” she said.
Theo’s smile was sad. “It won’t help. The powers that be were never very enthusiastic. I doubt they’d put you back on the air no matter what hoax you hunted.”
Kris powered down her laptop and began to pack her things. “Who said I’d let them?”
“Scotland,” Lola said. “Does anyone really go to Scotland on purpose?”
Kris tossed a few more sweaters into her suitcase. “Just me.”