Deaths Excellent Vacation

little more photogenic (didn’t they, Nora wondered, have dentists in Sint Pieter?) but was earnest and heartfelt in her sureness that she’d seen Jason.
    The makeup director tended to Nora’s eyebrows with the gentlest of touches while Nora’s director, Molly, slipped an update onto Nora’s interview pages.
    “Um, Nora, I’m not really comfortable with your headline theme tonight.”
    “ ‘Hope or Hoax’ is perfectly accurate.” Nora didn’t flinch as a stray hair was plucked away from her near-immaculate brow. It was a point of honor for Nora that she never flinched. She made other people flinch. It had been a rocky road on the climb to ratings glory and the multimilliondollar book deals. There’d been that suspect in one case who’d killed himself after Nora grilled him (could his guilt then be clearer? Nora had saved the taxpayers the cost of a trial, in her mind), and the other one where the man she’d proclaimed guilty for five months for killing his wife had, well, been found innocent via DNA evidence. Nora still had her doubts, as did any right-minded viewer. “ ‘Hope or Hoax’ is what tonight is about,” she said with an air of irritation.
    Molly raised an eyebrow. “I see your point, but I think it’s a bit cruel to the Kirks to call this hope.”
    “If it’s hope,” Nora explained with a smile of infinite patience, “then the viewers have a reason to tune in tomorrow. If it’s hoax, then they get to see me rip this little lying bitch to shreds.”
    “It just seems a bit . . .”
    “What?”
    Nora thought for a minute Molly’s mouth was forming the fatal word tasteless , but Molly crossed her arms. “Opportunistic. We’re walking a very fine line here, Nora.”
    “The only opportunistic person here might be this witness, this”—she glanced at her notes—“hotel worker, Annie Van Dorn. She could just be an attention seeker, a publicity hound. You know how I despise those loathsome people.”
    “I know, feeding on tragedy. The vultures.”
    Nora thought she detected sarcasm lurking in the vicinity of Molly’s tone but decided Molly wasn’t that stupid. “The intro stands.”
    “All right, Nora.” Molly turned and walked back to the director’s seat in the control room.
    Nora watched her go. She’d have to keep an eye on Molly. That girl was an unappealing mix of judgmental and ambitious. Most unbecoming. Opportunistic? No one was a greater friend or advocate to the Kirk family than Nora was. And poor lost Jason. She was truly his only friend, the person doing the most to keep his face in front of millions each day. She waved away the makeup artist.
    They went live thirty minutes later, and Nora, after her standard setup on the missing Jason’s history, cut straight to the satellite interview with the young woman who’d supposedly (Nora wove this knotty word into every sentence; it was her second favorite, after allegedly ) seen Jason on the far side of the island.
    Annie Van Dorn’s skin was a caramel color; her voice lightly accented, her English excellent. Slightly crooked teeth, but otherwise a nice face. She’d put on what Nora surmised was her Sunday best for the interview: a neat white blouse, three years out of fashion. Annie stood in front of a gnarled, wind-bent divi-divi tree in her yard that, to Nora, evoked an air of mystery and danger and Caribbean intrigue. The tree looked like a hand, reaching to clutch the young woman.
    “Annie, tell our viewers about yourself,” Nora said. Her voice was bright, open, and friendly.
    “I work at a hotel on Sint Pieter, in housekeeping.” Annie had a quiet, mild voice. A servant’s voice, Nora thought.
    “But not the hotel from which Jason vanished?”
    “No, ma’am, another one.” Annie wisely did not try to work the hotel’s name into her answer. Nora frowned on free advertising.
    “And what exactly do you claim you saw last night?”
    “Well.” Annie swallowed. “It was close to midnight, and I was at home in Marysville, on the other side of the island from where young Mr. Kirk vanished. I was getting ready for bed—and I thought I heard a noise in the yard. I live with my sister, but she was asleep already. I went to the window, and I saw, in the moonlight, a young man standing in the yard. Close to this tree.”
    “Describe him to me.” And at these words, a picture of Jason appeared on the split screen: blondish, handsome enough to be a model, six three, with a wide grin and broad